90 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



which make many stairways for the adhesive feet of Callorliinus 

 amply safe and comfortable. 



For the reason cited in a similar example at Zapadnie no ' ' holliis- 

 chickie" have been driven from this point since 1872, though it is one 

 of the easiest worked. It was, in the Russian times, a pet sealing 

 ground with them. The remains of the old village have nearly all 

 been buried in the sand near the lake, and there is really no mark of 

 its early habitation, unless it be the singular effect of a human grave- 

 yard being dug out and despoiled by the attrition of seal bodies and 

 flippers. The old cemetery just above and to the right of the barrab- 

 kie, near the little lake, was originallj^ established, so the natives 

 told me, far away from the hauling of the "holluschickie;" it was, 

 when I saw it in 1876, in a melancholy state of ruin — a thousand 

 young seals, at least, moved off from its surface as I came up, and they 

 had actually trampled out many sandy graves, rolling the bones and 

 skulls of Aleutian ancestrj?^ in every direction. Beyond this old bar- 

 rabkie, which the present natives established as a house of refuge 

 during the winter Avhen they were trapping foxes, looking to the west 

 over the lake, is a large expanse of low, flat swale and tundra, which 

 is terminated by the rocky ridge of Kaminista ; every foot of it has 

 been placed there subsequent to the original elevation of the island 

 by the action of the sea, beyond all question. It is covered with a 

 thick growth of the rankest sphagnum, which quakes and trembles 

 like a bog ander one's feet, but over which the most beautiful mosses 

 ever and anon crop out, including the characteristic floral display 

 before referred to in speaking of the island. Most of the way from 

 the village up to Northeast Point, as will be seen by a cursory glance 

 at the map, witli the exception of this bluff of Polavina and the ter- 

 raced table setting back from its face to Polavina Sopka, the whole 

 island is slighly elevated above the level of the sea, and its coast line 

 is lying just above and beyond the reach of the surf, where great 

 ledges of sand have been piled up by the wind, capped with sheafs 

 and tufts of rank-growing elymus. 



There is a small rookery, which I call Little Polavina, indicated 

 here, which does not promise much for the future; the sand cuts it off 

 on the north, and sand has blown around so at its rear as to make all 

 other ground not now occupied by the breeding seals there quite ineli- 

 gible. Polavina rookery has 4,000feet of sea margin, including Little 

 Polavina, with 150 feet of average depth, making ground for 300,000 

 breeding seals and their young. 



Northeast Point or'Novastoshnah rookery. — Though this is 

 the last of the St. Paul rookeries which I notice, yet it is so much 

 greater than any other one on the island, or two others for that mat- 

 ter, that it forms the central feature of St. Paul, and in truth presents 

 a most astonishing and extraordinary sight. It was a view of such 

 multitudes of amphibians, when I first stood upon the summit of 

 Hutchinson Hill and looked at the immense spread around me, that 

 suggested to my mind a doubt whether the accurate investigation 

 which I was making would give me courage to maintain the truth in 

 regard to the subject. 



The result of my first survey here presented such a startling array 

 of superficial area massed over by the breeding seals, that I was fairly 

 disconcerted at the magnitude of the result. It troubled me so when 

 my initial plattings were made — and I had worked them out so as to 

 place them tangibly before me — that I laid the whole ]3reliiuinary sur- 

 vey aside, and seizing upon the next favorable day went over the 



