340 The Ohio Journal of Science [Vol. XIX, No. 6, 



of the effects of wind action, in order to enable the reader 

 to form some conception of its violence. In this region the 

 regular westerly gales approach in velocity the tornadoes which 

 occasionally sweep our middle western states. Spurr^ states 

 that the natives cannot be induced to cross Katmai Pass except 

 in fine weather, because the wind picks up stones and carries 

 them with such force as to have killed many men. In Kodiak, 

 a heavy dory was once picked up from the beach and carried 

 up hill for a hundred yards, finally smashing in the front of 

 a house before it stopped. Winds of only less violence are of 

 common occurrence. 



At our camp in the upper valley we have measured, with a 

 weather bureau standard anemometer, winds blowing steadily 

 60 miles per hour, and much higher in the gusts. But the camp 

 was in an especially sheltered situation, chosen especially 

 with reference to avoiding such winds. Up on the mountains 

 it was much worse, for there it picked up pieces of sharp pumice 

 up to an inch in diameter and carried them with such force as to 

 inflict painful blows where they struck one's flesh. Pieces 

 even twice as large, though too heavy to be carried aloft, went 

 scurrying over the slopes almost like dry leaves before the gale. 



REVEGETATION GREATLY RETARDED BY SHIFTING STREAMS. 



Another factor retarding vegetation, whose importance is 

 almost as great as that of the wind, is introduced by shifting 

 water currents. The streams were completely choked with 

 ash and pumice by the eruption, and have not yet recovered 

 from that condition. They are so overloaded with detritus 

 that they have built up fans and flood plains many feet above 

 the former levels of their beds. Over these great deposits 

 of loose material they wander helplessly in many shifting 

 channels, now here, now there, now cutting away, now building 

 up. It is evident that no plants can obtain a foothold in such 

 places until the streams settle down enough to give them a 

 chance at the soil. 



3 20th Ann. Rept. U. S. G. S., pt. 7., p. 91. 



