26 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



namely, a few hundred yards in front of the viUage, the same extent 

 on the Garden Cove beach, southeast side, and less than half a mile at 

 Zapadnie, on the south side. 



Just aljove the Garden Cove, under the overhanging bluffs, several 

 thousand sea lions hold exclusive, though shy, possession. Here there 

 is a half mile of good landing. On the north shore of the island, 3 

 miles west from the village, a grand bluff wall, of basalt and tufa 

 intercalated, rises abruptly from the sea to a sheer height of 920 feet 

 at its reach of greatest elevation, thence, dropping a little, runs clear 

 around the island to Zapadnie, a distance of nearl}^ 10 miles, without 

 affording a single passageway up or down to the sea that thunders at 

 its base. Upon its innumerable narrow shelf margins and in its 

 countless chinks and crannies, and back therefrom over the extended 

 area of lava-shingied inland ridges and terraces, millions upon mil- 

 lions of waterfowl breed during the summer months. 



The general altitude of St. George, though in itself not great, has, 

 however, an average three times higher than that of St. Paul, the 

 elevation of which is quite low, and slopes gently down to the sea east 

 and north ; St. George rises abruptly, with exceptional spots for land- 

 ing. The loftiest summit on St. George — the top of the hill right back 

 to the southward of the village — is 9-30 feet, and is called by the natives 

 Ahluckeyak. That on St. Paul, as I have before said, is Boga Slov 

 hill — 600 feet. All elevations on either island, 15 or 20 feet above sea 

 level, are rough and hummocky, with the exception of the sand-dune 

 tracts at St. Paul and the summits of the cinder hills, on both islands. 

 Weathered out or washed from the basalt and pockets of olivine on 

 either island are aggregates of augite, seen most abundant on the 

 summit slopes of Ahluckeyak Hill, St. George. Specimens from the 

 stratifxcd bands of old, friable, gray lavas, so conspicuous on tlie shore 

 of this latter island, show the existence of hornblende and vitreous 

 feldspar in considerable quantity, while on the south shore, near the 

 Garden Cove, is a large dike of a l3luish and greenish gray phonolith, 

 in which numerous small crystals of spinel are found. A dike, with 

 well-defined walls of old, close-grained, clay-colored lava, is near the 

 village of St. George, about a quarter of a mile east from the landing, 

 in the face of those reddish breccia bluffs that rise from the sea. It 

 is the only example of the kind on the islands. The bases or founda- 

 tions of the Pribilof Islands are, all of them, basaltic; some are com- 

 pact and graj'ish- white, but most of them exceedingly porous and 

 ferruginous. Upon this solid floor are many hills of brown and red 

 tufa, cinder heaps, etc. Polavina Sopka, the second point in eleva- 

 tion on St. Paul Island, is almost entirely built up of red scoria and 

 breccia; so is Ahluckeyak Hill, on St. George and the cap to the high 

 bluffs opposite. The village hill at St. Paul, Cone Hill, the Einah- 

 nuhto Peaks, Crater Hill, North Hill, and Little Polavina are all ash 

 heaps of this character. The bluffs at the shore of Polavina Point, 

 St. Paul, show in a striking manner a section of the geological struc- 

 ture of the island. The tufas on both islands, at the surface, decom- 

 pose and weather into the base of good soil, which the severe climate, 

 however, renders useless to the husbandman. There is not a trace of 

 a granitic or a gneissic rock found in situ. Metamorpliic bowlders 

 have been collected along the beaches and pushed up by the ice floes 

 which have brought them down from the Siberian coast away to the 

 nortliAvest. The dark-brown tufa bluffs and the breccia walls at the 

 east landing of St. Paul Island, known as "Black Bluffs," rise sud- 

 denly from the sea 60 to 80 feet, with stratified horizontal lines of 



