10 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIBILOP ISLANDS. 



The Pribilof Islands lie in the heart of Bering Sea, and are among 

 the most insignificant landmarks known in that ocean. They are sit- 

 uated 192 miles north of Unalaska, 200 miles south of St. Matthews, 

 and about the same distance westward of Cape Newenham on the 

 mainland. 



Climate. — The islands of St. George and St. Paul are from 27 to 30 

 miles apart, St. George lying southeastward of St. Paul. They are 

 far enough south to be beyond the reach of permanent ice floes, upon 

 which polar bears could have made their way to the islands, though 

 a few of these animals were, doubtless, always present. They laid 

 also distant enough from the inhabited Aleutian districts and the 

 coast of the mainland to have remained unknown to savage men. 

 Hence they afforded the fur seal the happiest shelter and isolation, 

 for their position seems to be such as to surround and envelop them 

 with fog banks that fairly shut out the sun nine days in every ten 

 during the summer and breeding season. 



In this location ocean currents from the great Pacific, warmer than 

 the normal temperature of that latitude, trending up from southward, 

 ebb and flow around the islands as they pass, giving rise during the 

 summer and early autumn to constant, dense, humid fog and driz- 

 zling mists, which hang in heavy banks over the islands and the sea 

 line, seldom dissolving away to indicate a pleasant day. By the mid- 

 dle or end of October strong, cold winds, refrigerated on the Siberian 

 steppes, sweep down across the islands, carrying off the moisture and 

 clearing up the air. By the end of January or early in February 

 they usually bring, by their steady pressure from the north and 

 northwest, great fields of broken ice, sludgy floes, with nothing in 

 them approximating or approaching glacial ice. They are not very 

 heavy or thick, but still, as the wind blows, they compactly cover the 

 whole surface of the sea, completely shutting in the land, and for 

 months at a time hushing the wonted roar of the surf. In the excep- 

 tionally cold seasons that succeed each other up there every four or 

 five years, for periods of three and even four months — from Decem- 

 ber to May and sometimes into June — the islands will be completely 

 environed and icebound. On the other hand, in about the same rota- 

 tion occur the exceptionally mild winters. Not even the sight of an 

 ice floe is recorded during the whole winter, and there is very little 

 skating on the shallow lakes and lagoons peculiar to St. Paul and St. 

 George. This, however, is not often the case. 



The breaking up of winter weather and the precipitation of summer 

 (for there is no real spring or autumn in these latitudes) usually com- 

 mences about the first week in April. The ice begins to leave or dis- 

 solve at that time or a little later, so that by the 1st or 5th of May 

 the beaches and rocky sea margin beneath the mural precipices are 

 generally clear and free from ice and snow, although the latter occa- 

 sionally lies until the end of July or the middle of August in gullies 

 and on leeward hill slopes, where it has drifted during the winter. 

 Fog, thick and heavy, rolls up from the sea, and closes over the land 

 about the end of May; this, the habitual sign of summer, holds on 

 steadily to the middle or end of October again. 



The periods of change in climate are exceedingly irregular during 

 the autumn and spring, so called, but in summer the cool, moist, 

 shady, gray fog is constantly present. To this certainty of favored 



