292 MERRIAM 



cleared, there was seen a few miles away a column of 

 smoke, beneath which at evening something black ap- 

 peared. During the night fire arose in this place and at 

 times became so bright that every object on the island 

 could be clearly distinguished. An earthquake shook the 

 island (Umnak), and a terrific roaring came back from the 

 mountains to the south. The rising island twice hurled 

 stones as far as Umnak, a distance of thirty miles. At sun- 

 rise the earthquake ceased, the flames diminished, and the 

 newly risen island was seen, shaped like a black pointed 

 cap. A month later, Kriukof found it considerably higher. 

 Meanwhile fire had been thrown up continuously. After- 

 wards the island grew both in circumference and height, 

 the flames diminished, but steam and smoke rose in- 

 cessantly. After four years the smoke ceased, and after 

 eight (1804) sea-lion hunters who visited the island found 

 the water warm and the ground so hot that no one could 

 walk on it. 1 



While at Unalaska in 1817, Kotzebue was informed by 

 a trustworthy Russian that for a long time the island had 

 continued to increase in size and elevation ; that its cir- 

 cumference was estimated at two and a half miles and its 

 height at 350 feet, and that for three miles around it the 

 sea was covered with stones (doubtless pumice, which 

 floats on water). 



Baranof states that Bogoslof was again visited in June, 

 1814 (Grewingk insists that this is an error for 1804) and 

 a landing effected at a low place where a large herd of 

 sea-lions had hauled out on the rocks. It was then found 



1 In the above account, and in other early descriptions that follow, the language 

 of the original is in the main preserved. Had the observations been made by 

 geologists, the words ' fire ' and ' flame ' would probably not appear, as it is well 

 understood that the bright glow of a volcano is not fire in the proper sense of the 

 word, but the incandescence of molten lava which has come up from the interior 

 of the earth. Real flames are rarely seen in volcanoes ; the supposed flames are 

 usually illuminated clouds above the glowing crater. The so-called smoke clouds 

 are composed of fine rock dust. 



