326 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



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 bowlders. 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 those rocks, lifted up and pushed there by ice-fields. 



The sand which plays so important a part in the formation of Saint Paul's Island, and which is 

 almost entirely wanting in and around the others in this Pribylov Group, is principally composed of 

 foraminifera, together with (liatomacea, 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 bowlder bars were forming on Saint Paul's Island, they, in making 

 across from islet to islet, inclosed 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 tiny viviparous 

 fish 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 Aleuts assured me that they had caught fish in the 

 great 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 whenever they are examined. 

 Many water-plants, pond lilies, c., and alga? flourish, especially so in the large lake " Mee-sulk- 

 mah-nee," which is very shallow. 



The backbone of the island, running directly east and west from shore to shore between 

 Polavina Point and Einahnuhto Hills, constitutes the high land of the island: Polavina Sopka, an 

 old extinct cinder-crater, 550 feet; Bogaslov, an upheaved mass of splinted lava, 600 feet, and the 

 hills frowning over the bluffs there, on the west shore, are also GOO feet in elevation above the sea. 

 But the. average height of the upland between is not much over 100 to 150 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 extend, 

 inclosing the great lake, and ending in a narrow neck where it unites with Novastoshnah, or 

 Northeast Point. Here the 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 Novastoshnah was an island by itself, 

 to which they went in boats from Vesolia Mista; and the lagoon now so tightly inclosed was then 

 an open harbor, in which the ships of the old Russian company rode safely at anchor. To-day no 

 vessel drawing 10 feet of water can safely get nearer than half a mile of the village, or a mile 

 from this lagoon at low tide. 



LACK OF HARBORS ANCHORAGES. The total absence of a harbor at the Pribylov Islands 

 is much to be regretted. The village of Saint Paul, as will be seen by reference to the map, is so 



