14 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



at first without vegetation/ save St. Paul, where there was a small 

 "talneek," or willow, creeping along on the ground; and that on St. 

 George nothing grew, not even grass, except on the place where the 

 carcasses of dead animals rotted. Then, in the course of time, both 

 islands became covered with grass, a great part of it being of the 

 sedge kind, Ehjmus. This record of Veniaminov, however, is scarcely 

 credible. There are few, surely, who will not question the opinion 

 that the seals antedated the vegetation, for, according to his own state- 

 ments, those creatures were there then in the same immense numbers 

 that we find them to-day. The vegetation on these islands, such as it 

 is, is fresh and luxuriant during the growing season of June and July 

 and early August, but the beauty and economic value of trees and 

 shrubbery, of cereals and vegetables, is denied to them by climatic 

 conditions. Still I am strongly inclined to believe that, should some 

 of those hardy shrubs and spruce trees indigenous at Sitka or Kadiak 

 be transplanted properly to any of the southern hill slopes of St. 

 Paul most favored by soil, drainage, and bluffs for shelter from saline 

 gales, the}^ might grow, though I know that, owing to the lack of sun- 

 light, they would never mature their seed. There is, however, dur- 

 ing the summer, a beautiful spread of grasses, of flowering annuals, 

 biennials, and perennials, of gaily-colored lichens and crinkled 

 mosses,^ which have always afforded me great delight whenever I 

 have pressed my way over the moors and up the hillsides of the 

 rookeries. 



There are 10 or 12 species of grasses of every variety, from close, 

 curly, compact mats to tall stalks — tussocks of the wild wheat, Ehj- 

 mus arenaria, standing in favorable seasons waist high — the "wheat 

 of the north" — together with over 100 varieties of annuals, perennials, 

 spagnum, cryptogamic plants, etc., all flourishing in their respective 

 positions, and covering nearly every point of rock, tufa, cement, and 

 sand that a plant can grow upon, with a living coat of the greenest of 

 all greens — for there is not sunlight enough there to ripen any per- 

 ceptible tinge of ocher yellow into it — so green that it gives a deep 

 blue tint to gray noonday shadows, contrasting pleasantly with the 

 varying russets, reds, lemon yellows, and grays of the lichen-covered 

 rocks, and the brownish purple of the wild wheat on the sand-dune 

 tracts in autumn, together, also, with innumerable blue, yellow, pink, 

 and white phsenogamous blossoms, everywhere interspersed over the 

 grassy uplands and sandy flats. Occasionally, on looking into the 

 thickest masses of verdure, our common wild violet will be found, 

 while the phloxes are especially bright and brilliant here. The flow- 

 ers of one species of gentian, Gentiana verna, are very marked in 

 their beauty ; also those of a nasturtium and a creeping pea vine on 

 the sand dunes. The blossom of one species of the pulse family is 

 the only one here that emits a positive, rich perfume; all the others 

 are more suggestive of that quality than expressive. The most strik- 

 ing plant in all the long list is the 'ArchangeUca officirialis, with its 

 tall seed stalks and broad leaves, which grows first in spring and 

 keeps green latest in the fall. The luxuriant rhubarb-like stems of 

 this umbellifer, after they have made their rapid growth in June, are 

 eagerly sought for by the natives, who pull them and crunch them 

 between their teeth with all the relish that we experience in eating 



'Veniaminov: Zapieskie Oonalashkenskaho Otdayla, etc., 1843. 

 *The mosses at Kamminista, St. Paul, are the finest examples of their kind on 

 the islands. They are very perfect and beautiful in many species. 



