Chapter IX: Wonderful Seal Islands (2)

Again, the timid traveller here is delighted; he has been relieved of the great Alaskan curse of mosquitoes: he also walks the moors and hillsides secure in never finding a reptile of any sort whatever—no snakes, no lizards, no toads or frogs—nothing of the sort to be found on the Seal Islands.

Fish are scarce in the vicinity of these islands. Only a few representatives of those families which can secrete themselves with rare cunning are safe in visiting the Pribylovs in summer. Naturally enough, the finny tribes avoid the seal-churned waters for at least one hundred miles around. Among a few specimens, however, which I collected, three or four species new to natural science were found, and have since been named by experts in the Smithsonian Institution.

The presence of such great numbers of amphibian mammalia about the waters during five or six months of every year renders all fishing abortive, and unless expeditions are made seven or eight miles at least from the land, unless you desire to catch large halibut, it is a waste of time to cast your line over the gunwale of the boat. The natives capture “poltoos” or halibut, _Hippoglossus vulgaris_, within two or three miles of the reef-point on St. Paul and the south shore during July and August. After this season the weather is usually so stormy and cold that fishermen venture no more until the ensuing summer.[95]

With regard to the _Mollusca_ of the Pribylov waters, the characteristic forms of _Toxoglossata_ and _Rhachiglossata_ peculiar to this north latitude are most abundant; of the _Cephalopoda_ I have seen only a species of squid, _sepia_, or _loligo_. The clustering whelks (_Buccinum_) literally conceal large areas of the boulders on the beaches here and there. They are in immense numbers, and are crushed under your foot at almost every step when you pass over long reaches of rocky shingle at low tide. A few of the _Neptunea_ are found, and the live and dead shells of _Limacina_ are in great abundance wherever the floating kelp-beds afford them shelter.

On land a very large number of shells of the genera _Succinea_ and _Pupa_ abound all over the islands. On the bluffs of St. George, just over Garden Cove, I gathered a beautiful _Helix_.

The little fresh-water lakes and ponds contain a great quantity of representatives of the characteristic genera _Planorbis_, _Melania_, _Limnea_, and that pretty little bivalve, the _Cyclas_.

Of the _Crustacea_, the _Annelidæ_, and _Echinodermata_, there is abundant representation here. The sea-urchins, “repkie” of the natives, are eagerly sought for at low tide and eaten raw by them. The arctic sea-clam, _Mya truncata_, is once in a long time found here (it is the chief food of the walrus of Alaska), and the species of _Mytilus_, the mussels, so abundant in the Aleutian archipelago, are almost absent here at St. Paul and only sparingly found at St. George. Frequently the natives have brought a dish of sea-urchins’ viscera for our table, offering it as a great delicacy. I do not think any of us did more than to taste it. The native women are the chief hunters for echinoidæ, and during the whole spring and summer seasons they will be seen at both islands, wading in the pools at low water, with their scanty skirts high up, eagerly laying possessive hands upon every “bristling egg” that shows itself. They vary this search by poking, with a short-handled hook, into holes and rocky crevices for a small cottoid fish, which is also found here at low water in this manner. Specimens of this cottoid which I brought down declared themselves as representatives of a new departure from all other recognized forms in which the sculpin is known to sport; hence the name, generic and specific. The “sandcake,” _echinarachinus_, is also very common here.

By May 28th to the middle of June a fine table-crab, large, fat, and sweet, with a light, brittle shell, is taken while it is skurrying in and out of the lagoon as the tide ebbs and flows. It is the best-flavored crustacean known to Alaskan waters. They are taken nowhere else at St. Paul, and when on St. George I failed to see one. I am not certain as to the accuracy of the season of running, viz.: May 28th to June 15th, inasmuch as one of my little note-books on which this date is recorded turns out to be missing at the present writing, and I am obliged to give it from memory. The only economic shell-fish which the islands afford is embodied in this _Chionoecetes opilio (?)_. The natives affirm an existence of mussels here in abundance when the Pribylov group was first discovered; but now only a small supply of inferior size and quality is to be found.

With reference to the jelly-fishes, _Medusæ_, which are so abundant in the waters around these islands, their exceeding number and variety and beauty startled and enchanted me. An enormous aggregate of these creatures, some of them exquisitely delicate and translucent, ride in and out of the lagoon at St. Paul when the spring-tides flow and ebb. Myriads of them are annually stranded, to decay on the sandy flats of this estuary.

Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.]

As to sea-weeds, or mosses,—the extent, luxuriance, variety, and beauty of the algæ forests of those waters of Bering Sea which lave the coasts of the Pribylov Islands, call for more detail of description than space in this volume will allow, since anything like a fair presentation of the subject would require the reproduction of my water-colored drawings. After all heavier gales, especially the southeasters in October, if a naturalist will take the trouble to walk the sand-beach between Lukannon and northeast point of St. Paul Island, he will be rewarded by the memorable sight. He will find thrown up by the surf a vast windrow of kelp along the whole eight or ten miles of this walk—heaped, at some spots, nearly as high as his head; the large trunks of _Melanospermæ_, the small, but brilliant red and crimson fronds of _Rhodospermæ_ interwoven with the emerald-green leaves of the _Chlorospermæ_. The first-named group is by far the most abundant, and upon its decaying, fermenting brown and ochre heaps, he will see countless numbers of a buccinoid whelk, and a limnaca, feeding as they bore or suck out myriads of tiny holes in the leaf-fronds of the strong growing species. _Actinia_ or sea-anemones, together with asteroids or starfishes, _Discophoræ_ or jelly-fishes, are also interwoven and heaped up with the “kapoosta” or sea-cabbages just referred to; also, many rosy “sea-squirts,” yellow “cucumbers,” and other forms of _Holothuridæ_.

On the old killing-fields, on those spots where the sloughing carcasses of repeated seasons have so enriched the soil as to render it like fire to most vegetation, a silken green _Confervæ_ grows luxuriantly. This terrestrial algoid covering appears here and there, on these grounds, like so many door-mats of pea-green wool. That confervoid flourishes only on those spots where nothing but pure decaying animal matter is found. An admixture of sand or earth will always supplant it by raising up instead those strong growing grasses which I have alluded to elsewhere, and which constitute the chief botanical life of the killing-grounds.

In order that the reader can follow easily the narrative of that remarkable life-system which is conducted by the fur-seal as it annually rests and breeds upon the Pribylov group, I present a careful chart of each island and the contiguous islets, which are the only surveys ever made upon the ground. The reader will observe, as he turns to these maps, the striking dissimilarity which exists between them, not only in contour but in physical structure, the Island of St. Paul being the largest in superficial area, and receiving a vast majority of the _Pinnipedia_ that belong to both. As it lies in Bering Sea to-day, this island is, in its greatest length, between northeast and southwest points, thirteen miles, air-line; and a little less than six at points of greatest width. It has a superficial area of about thirty-three square miles, or twenty-one thousand one hundred and twenty acres, of diversified, rough and rocky uplands, rugged hills, and smooth, volcanic cones, which either set down boldly to the sea or fade out into extensive wet and mossy flats, passing at the sea-margins into dry, drifting, sand-dune tracts. It has forty-two miles of shore-line, and of this coast sixteen and a half miles are hauled over by fur-seals _en masse_. At the time of its first upheaval above the sea, it doubtless presented the appearance of ten or twelve small rocky, bluffy islets and points, upon some of which were craters that vomited breccia and cinders, with little or no lava overflowing. Active plutonic agency must have soon ceased after this elevation, and then the sea round about commenced a work which it is now engaged in—of building on to the skeleton thus created; and it has progressed to-day so thoroughly and successfully in its labor of sand-shifting, together with the aid of ice-floes, in their action of grinding, lifting, and shoving, that nearly all of these scattered islets within the present area of the island, and marked by its bluffs and higher uplands, are completely bound together by ropes of sand, changed into enduring bars and ridges of water-worn boulders. These are raised above the highest tides by winds that whirl the sand up, over and on them, as it dries out from the wash of the surf and from the interstices of rocks, which are lifted up and pushed by ice-fields.

The sand that plays so important a part in the formation of the Island of St. Paul, and which is almost entirely wanting in and around the others of this Pribylov group, is principally composed of _Foraminifera_, together with _Diatomacea_, mixed in with a volcanic base of fine comminuted black and reddish lavas and old friable gray slates. It constitutes the chief beauty of the sea-shore here, for it changes color like a chameleon, as it passes from wet to dry, being a rich steely-black at the surf-margin and then drying out to a soft purplish-brown and gray, succeeding to tints most delicate of reddish and pale neutral, when warmed by the sun and drifting up on to the higher ground with the wind. The sand-dune tracts on this island are really attractive in the summer, especially so during those rare days when the sun comes out, and the unwonted light shimmers over them and the most luxuriant grass and variety of beautiful flowers which exist in profusion thereon. In past time, as these sand and boulder bars were forming on St. Paul Island, they, in making across from islet to islet, enclosed small bodies of sea-water. These have, by evaporation and time, by the flooding of rains and annual melting of snow, become, nearly every one of them, fresh; they are all, great and small, well shown on my map, which locates quite a large area of pure water. In them, as I have hinted, are no reptiles; but an exquisite species of a tiny fish[96] exists in the lagoon-estuary near the village, and the small pure-water lakes of the natives just under the flanks of Telegraph Hill. The Aleutes assured me that they had caught fish in the big lake toward Northeast Point, when they lived in their old village out there; but, I never succeeded in getting a single specimen. The waters of these pools and ponds are fairly alive with vast numbers of minute _Rotifera_, which sport about in all of them wherever they are examined. Many species of water-plants, pond-lilies, algæ, etc., are found in those inland waters, especially in that large lake “Mee-sulk-mah-nee,” which is very shallow.

The backbone of St. Paul, running directly east and west, from shore to shore, between Polavina Point and Einahnuhto Hills, constitutes the high land of that island: Polavina Sopka, an old extinct cinder-crater, five hundred and fifty feet; Bogaslov, an upheaved mass of splinted lava, six hundred feet; and the hills frowning over the bluffs there, on the west shore, are also six hundred feet in elevation above the sea. But the average height of the upland between is not much over one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet above water-level, rising here and there into little hills and broad, rocky ridges, which are minutely sketched upon the map. From the northern base of Polavina Sopka a long stretch of low sand-flats extends, enclosing the great lake, and ending in a narrow neck where it unites with Novastoshnah, or Northeast Point. Here that volcanic nodule known as Hutchinson’s Hill, with its low, gradual slopes, trending to the east and southward, makes a rocky foundation secure and broad, upon which the great single rookery of the island, the greatest in the world, undoubtedly, is located. The natives say that when they first came to these islands Novastoshna was an island by itself, to which they went in boats from Vesolia Mista; and the lagoon now so tightly enclosed was then an open harbor in which the ships of the old Russian Company rode safely at anchor. To-day, no vessel drawing ten feet of water can safely get nearer than half a mile of the village, or a mile from this lagoon at low tide.

The total absence of a harbor at the Pribylov Islands is much to be regretted. The village of St. Paul, as will be seen by reference to the map, is so located as to command the best landings for vessels that can be made during the prevalence of any and all winds, except those from the south. From these there is no shelter for ships, unless they run around to the north side, where they are unable to hold practicable communication with the people or to discharge. At St. George matters are still worse, for the prevailing northerly, westerly, and easterly winds drive the boats away from the village roadstead, and weeks often pass at either island, but more frequently at the latter, ere a cargo is landed at its destination. Under the very best circumstances, it is both hazardous and trying to unload a ship at any of these places. The approach to St. Paul by water during thick weather is doubtful and dangerous, for the land is mostly low at the coast, and the fogs hang so dense and heavy over and around the hills as to completely obliterate their presence from vision. The captain fairly feels his way in by throwing his lead-line and straining his ear to catch the muffled roar of the seal-rookeries, which are easily detected when once understood, high above the booming of the surf. At St. George, however, the bold, abrupt, bluffy coast everywhere all around, with its circling girdle of flying water-birds far out to sea, looms up quite prominently, even in the fog; or, in other words, the navigator can notice it before he is hard aground or struggling to haul to windward from the breakers under his lee. There are no reefs making out from St. George worthy of notice, but there are several very dangerous and extended ones peculiar to St. Paul, which Captain John G. Baker, in command of the vessel[97] under my direction, carefully sounded out, and which I have placed upon my chart for the guidance of those who may sail in my wake hereafter.

When the wind blows from the north, northwest, and west to southwest, the company’s steamer drops her anchor in eight fathoms of water abreast of the black bluffs opposite the village, from which anchorage her stores are lightered ashore; but in the northeasterly, easterly, and southeasterly winds, she hauls around to the lagoon bay west of the village, and there, little less than half a mile from the landing, she drops her anchor in nine fathoms of water, and makes considerable headway at discharging her cargo. Sailing-craft come to both anchorages, but, however, keep still farther out, though they choose relatively the same positions, yet seek deeper water to swing to their cables in: the holding-ground is excellent. At St. George the steamer comes, wind permitting, directly to the village on the north shore, close up, and finds her anchorage in ten fathoms of water, over poor holding-ground; still it is only when three or four days have passed, free from northerly, westerly, or easterly winds that she can make the first attempt to safely unload. The landing here is a very bad one, surf breaking most violently upon the rocks from one end of the year to the other.

[_The North Store and landing, viewed from St. Paul._]]

The observer will notice that six miles southward and westward of the reef of St. Paul Island is a bluffy islet, called by the Russians Bobrovia, because in olden time the promishlyniks are said to have captured many thousands of sea-otters on its rocky coast. It rises from the ocean, sheer and bold, an unbroken mural precipice extending nearly all around, of sea-front, but dropping on its northern margin, at the water, low, and slightly elevated above the surf-wash, with a broken, rocky beach and no sand. The height of the bluffs at their greatest elevation over the west end is three hundred feet, while the eastern extremity is quite low, and terminated by a queer, funnel-shaped crater-hill, which is as distinctly defined, and as plainly scorched and devoid of the slightest sign of vegetation within as though it had burned up and out yesterday. That crater-point on Otter Island is the only unique feature of the place, for with the exception of this low north shore, before mentioned, where a few thousand of “bachelor seals” haul out during the season every year, there is nothing else worthy of notice concerning it. A bad reef makes out to the westward, which I have indicated from my observation of the rocks awash, looking down upon them from the bluffs. Great numbers of water-fowl roost upon the cliffs, and there are here about as many blue foxes to the acre as the law of life allows. A small, shallow pool of impure water lies close down to the north shore, right under a low hill upon which the Russians in olden times posted a huge Greek cross, that is still standing; indeed it was the habit of those early days of occupation in Alaska to erect such monuments everywhere on conspicuous elevations adjacent to the posts or settlements. One of these is still standing at Northeast Point, on the large sand-dune there which overlooks the killing-grounds, and another sound stalwart cross yet faces the gales and driving “boorgas” on the summit of Bogaslov Mountain, as it has withstood them during the last sixty years.

To the eastward, six miles from Northeast Point, will be noticed a small rock named Walrus Island. It is a mere ledge of lava, flat-capped, lifted just above the wash of angry waves; indeed, in storms of great power, the observer, standing on either Cross or Hutchinson’s Hills, with a field-glass, can see the water breaking clear over it: these storms, however, occur late in the season, usually in October or November. This island has little or no commercial importance, being scarcely more than a quarter of a mile in length and one hundred yards in point of greatest width, with bold water all around, entirely free from reefs or sunken rocks. As might be expected, there is no fresh water on it. In a fog it makes an ugly neighbor for the sea-captains when they are searching for St. Paul; they all know it, and they all dread it. It is not resorted to by the fur-seals or by sea-lions in particular; but, singularly enough, it is frequented by several hundred male walrus, to the exclusion of females, every summer. A few sea-lions, but only a very few, however, breed here. On account of the rough weather, fogs, etc., this little islet is seldom visited by the natives of St. Paul, and then only in the egging season of late June and early July when that surf-beaten breakwater literally swarms with breeding sea-fowl.

This low, tiny, island is, perhaps, the most interesting single spot now known to the naturalist who may land in northern seas, to study the habits of bird-life; for here, without exertion or risk, he can observe and walk among tens upon tens of thousands of screaming water-fowl; and, as he sits down upon the polished lava rock, he becomes literally ignored and environed by these feathered friends, as they reassume their varied positions of incubation, from which he disturbs them by his arrival. Generation after generation of their kind have resorted to this rock unmolested, and to-day, when you get among them, all doubt and distrust seem to have been eliminated from their natures. The island itself is rather unusual in those formations which we find peculiar to Alaskan waters. It is almost flat, with slight, irregular undulations on top, spreading over an area of five acres perhaps. It rises abruptly, though low, from the sea, and it has no safe beach upon which a person can land from a boat; not a stick of timber or twig of shrubbery ever grew upon it, though the scant presence of low, crawling grasses in the central portions prevents the statement that _all_ vegetation is absent. Were it not for the frequent rains and dissolving fog characteristic of summer weather here, the accumulation of guano would be something wonderful to contemplate—Peru would have a rival. As it is, however, the birds, when they return, year after year, find their nesting-floor swept as clean as though they had never sojourned there before. The scene of confusion and uproar that presented itself to my astonished senses when I approached this place in search of eggs, one threatening, foggy July morning, may be better imagined than described, for, as the clumsy bidarrah came under the lee of the low cliffs, swarm upon swarm of thousands of murres or “arries” dropped in fright from their nesting-shelves, and, before they had control of their flight, they struck to the right and left of me, like so many cannon-balls. I was forced, in self-protection, to instantly crouch for a few moments under the gunwale of the boat until the struggling, startled flock passed, like an irresistible, surging wave, over my head. Words cannot depict the amazement and curiosity with which I gazed around after climbing up to the rocky plateau, and stood among myriads of breeding-birds; they fairly covered the entire surface of the island with their shrinking forms, while others whirled in rapid flight over my head, as wheels within wheels, so thickly inter-running that the blue and gray of the sky was hidden from my view. Add to this impression the stunning whir of hundreds of thousands of strong, beating wings, the shrill screams of the gulls, and a muffled croaking of the “arries,” coupled with an indescribable, disagreeable smell which arose from broken eggs and other decaying substances—then a faint idea may be evoked of the strange reality spread before me. Were it not for this island and the ease with which the natives can gather, in a few hours, tons upon tons of sea-fowl eggs, the people of St. Paul would be obliged to go the westward, and suspend themselves from the lofty cliffs of Einahnuhto, dangling over the sea by ropes, as their less favored neighbors are only too glad and willing to do at St. George.

I am much divided in my admiration of the two great bird-rookeries of this Pribylov group, the one on the face of the high bluffs at St. George, and the other on the table-top of Walrus Islet; but perhaps the latter place gives, within the smallest area, the greatest variety of nesting and breeding birds, for here the “arrie” and many gulls, cormorants, sea-parrots, and auks come to lay their eggs in countless numbers. The face and brow of the low, cliff-like sea-front to this island are occupied almost exclusively by the “arries,” _Lomvia arra_, which lay a single egg each on the surface of the bare rock, and stand, just like so many champagne bottles, straddling over them while hatching, only leaving at irregular intervals to feed, and then not until their mates relieve them. Hundreds of thousands of these birds alone are thus engaged about the 29th of every June on this little rocky island, roosting stacked up together as tight as so many sardines in a box, as compactly as they can be stowed, each and all of them uttering an incessant, muffled, hoarse, grunting noise. How fiercely they quarrel among themselves—everlastingly! and in this way thousands of eggs are rolled off into the sea, or into crevices, or into fissures, where they are lost and broken.

The “arrie” lays but one egg. If it is removed or broken, she will soon lay another; but if undisturbed after depositing the first, she undertakes its hatching at once. The size, shape, and coloration of this egg, among the thousands which came under my observation, are exceedingly variable. A large proportion of the eggs become so dirty by rolling here and there in the guano while the birds tread and fight over them as to be almost unrecognizable. I was struck by a happy adaptation of nature to their rough nesting. It is found in the toughness of this shell of the egg, so tough that the natives, when gathering them, throw them as farmers do apples into their tubs, baskets, etc., on the cliff, and then carry them down to a general heap of collection near the boats’ landing, where they are poured out upon the rocks with a single flip of the hand, just as a sack of potatoes would be emptied; and then again, after this, they are quite as carelessly handled when loaded into the “bidarrah,” sustaining through it all a very trifling loss from crushed or broken specimens.[98]

These “arries” seem to occupy a ribbon strip in width: it is drawn around the outward edges of the flat table-top to Walrus Island as a regular belt, reserved all to themselves: while the small grassy interior from which they are thus self-excluded is the only place, I believe, in Bering Sea where the big white gull, _Larus glaucus_, breeds. Here I found among grassy tussocks the white burgomaster building a nest of dry grass, sea-ferns, _Sertularidæ_, etc., very nicely laid up and rounded, and in which it laid usually three eggs, sometimes only a couple; occasionally I would look into a nest with four. These heavy gulls could not breed on either of the other islands in this manner, for the glaucous gull is too large to settle on the narrow shelf-ledges of the cliffs, as the smaller gulls do, and lesser water-fowls, and those places which could receive it would also be a happy hunting-ground and footing to the foxes.

The red-legged kittiwake, _Rissa brevirostris_, and its cousin, _Rissa tridactyla_, build in the most amicable manner together on the faces of those cliffs, for they are little gulls, and they associate with cormorants, sea-parrots, and tiny auks, all together, and, with the exception of the last, their nests are very easy of access. All birds, especially the “arries,” have an exceedingly happy time of it on this Walrus Islet—nothing to disturb them, in my opinion, free from the ravenous maw of blue foxes over on St. Paul, and from the piratical and death-dealing sweep of owls and hawks, which infest the Aleutian chain and the mainland.

The position of the islands is such as to be somewhat outside of that migratory path pursued by the birds on the mainland, and owing to this reason they are only visited by a few stragglers from that quarter, a few from the Asiatic side, and by the millions of their own home-bred and indigenous stock. One of these migratory species, a turnstone, however, comes here every summer, for three or four weeks’ stay, in great numbers, and actually gets so fat in feeding upon the larvæ which abound in the decaying carcasses over the killing-grounds that it usually bursts open when it falls, shot on the wing. A heavy easterly gale once brought a strange bird to the islands from the mainland—a grebe, _P. griseigena_. It was stranded on St. George in 1873, whereupon the natives declared the like of which they had never seen before; again, I found a robin one cool morning in October, the 15th: the natives told me that it was an accident—brought over by some storm or gale of wind that took it up and off from its path across the tundra of Bristol Bay. The next fair wind sweeping from the north or the west could be so improved by this robin, _M. migratoria_, that it would spread its wings and as abruptly return. Thus hawks, owls, and a number of strange water-fowls visit the islands, but never remain there long.

The Russians tried the experiment of bringing up from Sitka and Oonalashka a flock of ravens, as scavengers, a number of years ago, and when they were very uncleanly in the village, in contrast with the practice of the present hour. They reasoned that they would—these ill-omened birds—be invaluable as health officers; but the _Corvidæ_ invariably, sooner or later, and within a very short time, took the first wind-train or lightning-express back to the mainland or the Aleutian islands. Yet the natives say that if the birds had been young ones instead of old fellows they would have remained. I saw a great many, however, at St. Matthew Island in August, 1874.

A glance at the map of St. Paul shows that nearly half of its superficial area is low and quite flat, not much elevated above the sea. Wherever the sand-dune tracts are located, and that is right along the coast, will be found an irregular succession of hummocks and hillocks, drifted by the wind, which are very characteristic. On the summits of these hillocks an _Elymus_ has taken root in times past, and, as the sand drifts up, it keeps growing on and up too, so that a quaint spectacle is presented of large stretches to the view wherein sand-dunes, entirely bare of all vegetation at their base and on their sides, are crowned with a living cap of the brightest green—a tuft of long, waving grass blades which will not down. None of this peculiar landscaping, however, is seen on St. George, not even in the faintest degree. Travel about St. Paul, with the exception of that trail to Northeast Point, where the natives take advantage of low water to run on the hard, wet sand, is exceedingly difficult, and there are examples of only a few white men who have ever taken the trouble and expended the physical energy necessary to accomplish a comparatively short walk from the village to Nahsayvernia, or the north shore. Walking upon the moss-hidden and slippery rocks, or tumbling over slightly uncertain tussocks, is a task and not a pleasure. On St. George, with the exception of a half-mile path to the village cemetery and back, nobody pretends to walk, except the natives who go to and from the rookeries in their regular seal-drives. Indeed, I am told that I am the only white man who has ever traversed the entire coast-line of both islands.[99]

Turning to St. George and its profile, presented by the accompanying map, the observer will be struck at once by the solidity of that little island and its great boldness, rising, as it does, sheer and precipitous from the sea all around, except at the three short reaches of the coast indicated on my chart, and where the only chance to come ashore exists.

The seals naturally have no such opportunity to gain a footing here as they have on St. Paul, hence their comparative insignificance as to number. The island itself is a trifle over ten miles in extreme length, east and west, and about four and a quarter miles in greatest width, north and south. It looks, when plotted, somewhat like an old stone axe; and, indeed, when I had finished my initial contours from my field-notes, the ancient stone-axe outline so disturbed me that I felt obliged to resurvey the southern shore, in order that I might satisfy my own mind as to the accuracy of my first work. It consists of two great plateaus, with a high upland valley between, the western table-land dropping abruptly to the sea at Dalnoi Mees, while the eastern falls as precipitately at Waterfall Head and Tolstoi Mees. There are several little reservoirs of fresh water—I can scarcely call them lakes—on this island; pools, rather, that the wet sphagnum seems to always keep full, and from which drinking-water in abundance is everywhere found. At Garden Cove is a small, living stream: it is the only one on the Pribylov group.

The Drove passing over the Lagoon Flats to the Killing Grounds under the Village of St. Paul. Looking S. W. over the Village Cove and the Lagoon Rookery]

Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.]

Viewed from a point at sea about 7 miles E. N. E., off Tolstoi Mees: these characteristic swarms of water-fowl, arries and choochkies, stirred up by an approach of the steamer, encircle the whole island in this manner, and give notice to a mariner, in thick weather, of the proximity of that island long before it can be seen]

St. George has an area of about twenty-seven square miles; it has twenty-nine miles of coast-line, of which only two and a quarter are visited by the fur-seals, and which is in fact all the eligible landing-ground afforded them by the structure of the island. Nearly half of the shore of St. Paul is a sandy beach, while on St. George there is less than a mile of it all put together, namely: a few hundred yards in front of the village, the same extent on the Garden Cove beach, southeast side, and less than half a mile at Zapadnie on the south side.

Just above the Garden Cove, under the overhanging bluffs, several thousand sea-lions hold exclusive, though shy, possession. Here there is a half-mile of good landing. On the north shore of the island, three miles west from the village, a grand bluff wall of basalt and tufa intercalated rises abruptly from the sea to a sheer height of nine hundred and twenty feet at its reach of greatest elevation: thence, dropping a little, runs clear around the island to Zapadnie, a distance of nearly ten miles, without affording a single passage-way up or down to the sea that thunders at its base. Upon its innumerable narrow shelf-margins, and in its countless chinks and crannies, and back therefrom over an extended area of lava-shingled inland ridges and terraces, millions upon millions of water-fowl breed during the summer months.

The general altitude of St. George, though in itself not great, has, however, an average three times higher than that of St. Paul, the elevation of which is quite low, and slopes gently down to the sea east and north; St. George rises abruptly, with exceptional spots for landing. The loftiest summit on St. George, the top of the hill right back to the southward of the village, is nine hundred and thirty feet, and is called by the natives Ahluckeyak. That on St. Paul, as I have before said, is Bogaslov Hill, six hundred feet. All elevations on either island, fifteen or twenty feet above sea-level, are rough and hummocky, with the exception of those sand-dune tracts at St. Paul and the summits of the cinder hills, on both islands. Weathered out, or washed from the basalt and pockets of olivine on either island, are aggregates of augite, seen most abundant on the summit slopes of Ahluckeyak Hill, St. George. Specimens from stratified bands of old, friable, gray lavas, so conspicuous on the shore of this latter island, show an existence of hornblende and vitreous felspar in considerable quantity, while on the south shore, near Garden Cove, is a large dike of a bluish and greenish gray phonolite, in which numerous small crystals of spinel are found. A dike, with well-defined walls, of old close-grained, clay-colored lava, is near the village of St. George, about a quarter of a mile east from the landing, in the face of those reddish breccia bluffs that rise from the sea. It is the only example of the kind on the islands. The bases or foundations of the Pribylov Islands are, all of them, basaltic; some are compact and grayish-white, but most of them exceedingly porous and ferruginous.[100] Upon this solid floor are many hills of brown and red tufa, cinder-heaps, etc. Polavina Sopka, the second point in elevation on St. Paul Island, is almost entirely built up of red scoria and breccia; so is Ahluckeyak Hill, on St. George, and the cap to the high bluffs opposite. The village hill at St. Paul, Cone hill, the Einahnuhto peaks, Crater Hill, North Hill, and Little Polavina are all ash-heaps of this character. The bluffs at the shore of Polavina Point, St. Paul, show in a striking manner a section of the geological structure of the island. The tufas on both islands, at the surface, decompose and weather into the base of good soil, which the severe climate, however, renders useless to good husbandmen. There is not a trace of granitic or of gneissoid rocks found _in situ_. Metamorphic boulders have been collected along the beaches and pushed up by heavy ice-floes which have brought them down from Siberian coasts far away to the northwest. The dark-brown tufa bluffs and the breccia walls at the east landing of St. Paul Island, known as “Black Bluffs,” rise suddenly from the sea sixty to eighty feet, with stratified horizontal lines of light-gray calcareous conglomerate, or cement, in which are embedded sundry fossils characteristic of and belonging to the Tertiary Age, such as _Cardium grœnlandicum_, _C. decoratum_, and _Astarte pectunculata_, etc. This is the only locality within the purview of the Pribylov Islands where any palæontological evidence of their age can be found. These specimens, as indicated, are exceedingly abundant; I brought down a whole series, gathered there at the east landing or “Navastock,” in a short half-hour’s search and labor.

Although small quantities of drift-wood lodge at all points of the coast, yet the greatest amount is found on the south shore, and thence around to Garden Cove; this drift-timber is usually wholly stripped of its bark, principally pine and fir sticks, some of them quite large, eighteen inches or two feet in diameter. Several years occur when a large driftage will be thrown or stranded here; then long intervals of many seasons will elapse with scarcely a log or stick coming ashore. I found at Garden Cove, in June, 1873, the well-preserved husk of a cocoanut, cast up by the surf on the beach: did I not know that it was most undoubtedly thrown over by some whaler in these waters, not many hundred miles away at the farthest, I should have indulged in a pretty reverie as to its path in drifting from the South Seas to this lonely islet. I presume, however, that the timber which the sea brings for the Pribylov Islands is that borne down upon the annual floods of the Kuskokvim and Nooshagak Rivers on the mainland, and to the east-northeastward, a trifle more than two hundred and twenty-five miles; it comes, however, in very scant supply. I saw very little drift-wood on St. Matthew Island; but on the eastern shore of St. Lawrence there was an immense aggregate, which unquestionably came from the Yukon mouth.

The fact that fur-seals frequent these islands and those of Bering and Copper, on the Russian side, to the exclusion of other land, seems at first odd or singular, to say the least; but when we come to examine the subject we find that those animals, when they repair hither to rest for two or three months on the land, as they must do by their habit during the breeding-season, require a cool, moist atmosphere, imperatively coupled with firm, well-drained land, or dry broken rocks or shingle, rather, upon which to take their positions and remain undisturbed by the weather and the sea for a lengthy period of reproduction. If the rookery-ground is hard and flat, with an admixture of loam or soil, puddles are speedily formed in this climate, where it rains almost every day, and when not raining, rain-fogs take rapid succession and continue the saturation, making thus a muddy slime, which very quickly takes the hair off the animals whenever it plasters or wherever it fastens on them; hence they carefully avoid any such landing. If they occupy a sandy shore the rain beats that material into their large, sensitive eyes, and into their fur, so they are obliged, from simple irritation, to leave and return to the sea for relief.

This inspection of some natural characteristics of the Pribylov group renders it quite plain that the Seal Islands, now under discussion, offer to the _Pinnipedia_ very remarkable advantages for landing, especially so at St. Paul, where the ground of basaltic rock and of volcanic tufa or cement slopes up from many points gradually above the sea, making thereby a perfectly adapted resting-place for any number, from a thousand to millions, of those intelligent animals, which can lie out here from May until October every year in perfect physical peace and security. There is not a rod of ground of this character offered to these animals elsewhere in all Alaska, not on the Aleutian chain, not on the mainland, not on St. Matthew or St. Lawrence. Both of the latter islands were surveyed by myself, with special reference to this query, in 1874; every foot of St. Matthew shore-line was examined, and I know that the fur-seal could not rest on the low clayey flats there in contentment a single day; hence he never has rested there, nor will he in the future. As to St. Lawrence, it is so ice-bound and snow-covered in spring and early summer, to say nothing of numerous other physical disadvantages, that it never becomes of the slightest interest to fur-seals.

When Pribylov, in taking possession, landed on St. George a part of his little ship’s crew, July, 1786, he knew that, as it was uninhabited, it would be necessary to establish a colony there from which to draft laborers to do all killing, skinning, and curing of the peltries; therefore he and his associates, and his rivals after him, imported natives of Oonalashka and Atkha—passive, docile Aleutes. They founded their first village a quarter of a mile to the eastward of one of the principal rookeries on St. George, now called “Starry Arteel,” or “Old Settlement”; a village was also located at Zapadnie, and a succession of barraboras planted at Garden Cove. Then, during the following season, more men were brought up from Atkha and taken over to St. Paul, where five or six rival traders posted themselves on the north shore, near and at “Maroonitch,” and at the head of the Big Lake, among the sand-dunes there. They were then, as they are now, somewhat given to riotous living if they only had the chance, and the ruins of the Big Lake settlement are pleasantly remembered by the descendants of those pioneers to-day, on St. Paul, who take off their hats as they pass by to affectionately salute, and call the place “Vesolia Mista,” or “Jolly Spot”—the aged men telling me, in a low whisper, that “in those good old days they had plenty of rum.” But, when the pressure of competition became great, another village was located at Polavina, and still another at Zapadnie, until the activity and unscrupulous energy of all these rival settlements well-nigh drove out and eliminated the seals in 1796. Three years later the whole territory of Alaska passed into the hands of the absolute power vested in the Russian American Company. These islands were in the bill of sale, and early in 1799 the competing traders were turned off neck and heels from them, and the Pribylov group passed under the control of a single man, the iron-willed Baranov. The people on St. Paul were then all drawn together, for economy and warmth, into a single settlement at Polavina. Their life in those days must have been miserable. They were mere slaves, without the slightest redress from any insolence or injury which their masters might see fit, in petulance or brutal orgies, to inflict upon them. Here they lived and died, unnoticed and uncared for, in large barracoons half under ground and dirt-roofed, cold and filthy. Along toward the beginning or end of 1825, in order that they might reap the advantage of being located best to load and unload ships, the Polavina settlement was removed to the present village site, as indicated on the map, and the natives have lived there ever since.

On St. George the several scattered villages were abandoned, and consolidated at the existing location some years later, but for a different reason. The labor of bringing the seal-skins over to Garden Cove, which is the best and surest landing, was so great, and that of carrying them from the north shore to Zapadnie still greater, that it was decided to place the consolidated settlement at such a point between them, on the north shore, that the least trouble and exertion of conveyance would be necessary. A better place, geographically, for the business of gathering the skins and salting them down at St. George cannot be found on the island, but a poorer place for a landing it is difficult to pick out, though in this respect there is not much choice outside of Garden Cove.

Up to the time of the transfer of the territory and leasing of the islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, in August, 1870, these native inhabitants all lived in huts or sod-walled and dirt-roofed houses, called “barrabkies,” partly under ground. Most of these huts were damp, dark, and exceedingly filthy: it seemed to be the policy of a short-sighted Russian management to keep them so, and to treat the natives not near so well as they treated the few hogs and dogs which they brought up there for food and for company. The use of seal-fat for fuel, caused the deposit upon everything within doors of a thick coat of greasy, black soot, strongly impregnated with a damp, moldy, and indescribably offensive odor. They found along the north shore of St. Paul and at Northeast Point, occasionally scattered pieces of drift-wood, which was used, carefully soaked anew in water if it had dried out, split into little fragments, and, trussing the blubber with it when making their fires, the combination gave rise to a roaring, spluttering blaze. If this drift-wood failed them at any time when winter came round, they were obliged to huddle together beneath skins in their cold huts, and live or die, as the case might be. But the situation to-day has changed marvellously. We see here now at St. Paul, and on St. George, in the place of the squalid, filthy habitations of the immediate past, two villages, neat, warm, and contented. Each family lives in a snug frame-dwelling; every house is lined with tarred paper, painted, furnished with a stove, with out-houses, etc., complete; streets laid out, and the foundations of these habitations regularly plotted thereon. There is a large church at St. Paul, and a less pretentious but very creditable structure of the same character on St. George; a hospital on St. Paul, with a full and complete stock of drugs, and skilled physicians on both islands to take care of the people, free of cost. There is a school-house on each island, in which teachers are also paid by the company eight months in the year, to instruct the youth, while the Russian Church is sustained entirely by the pious contributions of the natives themselves on these two islands, and sustained well by each other. There are eighty families, or eighty houses, on St. Paul, in the village, with twenty or twenty-four such houses to as many families at St. George, and eight other structures. The large warehouses and salt-sheds of the Alaska Commercial Company, built by skilful mechanics, as have been the dwellings just referred to, are also neatly painted; and, taken in combination with the other features, constitute a picture fully equal to the average presentation of any one of our small eastern towns There is no misery, no downcast, dejected, suffering humanity here to-day. These Aleutes, who enjoy as a price of their good behavior, the sole right to take and skin seals for the company, to the exclusion of all other people, are known to and by their less fortunate neighbors elsewhere in Alaska as the “Bogatskie Aloutov,” or the “rich Aleutes.” The example of the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company, on both islands, from the beginning of its lease, and the course of the Treasury agents during the last eight or nine years, have been silent but powerful promoters of the welfare of these people. They have maintained perfect order; they have directed neatness, and cleanliness, and stimulated industry, such as those natives had never before dreamed of.[101] The chief source of sickness used to arise from the wretched character of the barrabkies in which they lived; but it was, at first, a very difficult matter to get frame-houses to supplant successfully the sod-walled and dirt-roofed huts of the islands.

Many experiments, however, were made, and a dozen houses built, ere the result was as good as the style of primitive housing, when it had been well done and kept in best possible repair. In such a damp climate, naturally, a strong moldy smell pervades all inclosed rooms which are not thoroughly heated and daily dried by fires; and, in the spring and fall, frost works through and drips and trickles like rain adown the walls. The present frame-houses occupied by the natives owe their dryness, their warmth, and protection from the piercing “boorgas” to the liberal use of stout tarred paper in the lining. An overpowering mustiness of the hallways, out-houses, and, in fact, every roofed-in spot, where a stove is not regularly used, even in the best-built residences, is one of the first disagreeable sensations which the new arrivals always experience when they take up their quarters here. Perhaps, if it were not for the nasal misery that floats in from the killing-grounds to the novice, this musty, moldy state of things up here would be far more acute, as an annoyance, than it is now. The greater grief seems to soon fully absorb the lesser one; at least, in my own case, I can affirm the result.

As they lived in early time, it was a physical impossibility for them to increase and multiply;[102] but, since their elevation and their sanitary advancement are so marked, it may be reasonably expected that those people for all time to come will at least hold their own, even though they do not increase to any remarkable degree. Perhaps it is better that they should not. But it is exceedingly fortunate that they do sustain themselves so as to be, as it were, a prosperous corporate factor, entitled to the exclusive privilege of labor on these islands. As an encouragement for their good behavior the Alaska Commercial Company, in pursuance of its enlightened treatment of the whole subject, so handsomely exhibited by its housing of these people, has assured them that so long as they are capable and willing to perform the labor of skinning the seal-catch every year, so long will they enjoy the sole privilege of participating in that toil and its reward. This is wise on the part of the company, and it is exceedingly happy for the people. They are, of all men, especially fitted for the work connected with the seal-business—no comment is needed—nothing better in the way of manual labor, skilled and rapid, could be rendered by any body of men, equal in numbers, living under the same circumstances, all the year round. They appear to shake off the periodic lethargy of winter and its forced inanition, to rush with the coming of summer into the severe exercise and duty of capturing, killing, and skinning the seals, with vigor and with persistent and commendable energy.

To-day only a very small proportion of the population are descendants of the pioneers who were brought here by the several Russian companies in 1787 and 1788; a colony of one hundred and thirty-seven souls, it is claimed, principally recruited at Oonalashka and Atkha.