ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 191 



which, until Lieutenant Maynard and myself in 1874 surveyed and 

 walked over its entire coast line, had not been trodden, by white men 

 or by natives, since that dismal record made b}^ a party of five Russians 

 and seven Aleuts who passed the winter of 1810-11 on it and who 

 were so stricken down with scurvy as to cause the death of all the 

 Russians save one, while the rest barely recovered and left early the 

 following year. We found the ruins of the huts which had been 

 occupied by this unfortunate and discomfited party of fur hunters 

 who were landed there to secure polar bears in the depth of winter, 

 when such ursine coats shoukl be the finest. 



Topography of St. Matthew Island. — St. Matthew Island is a 

 queer, jagged, straggling reach of bluffs and headlands, connected by 

 bars and "lowland spits. The former, seen at a little distance out at 

 sea, resemble half a dozen distinct islands. The extreme length is 22 

 miles and it is exceedingly narrow in proportion. Hall Island is a 

 small one that lies west from it, separated from it by a strait (Sarichev) 

 less than 3 miles in width, while the only other outlying land is a 

 sharp, jagged i)innacle rock, rearing itself over 1,000 feet abruptly 

 from the sea, standing 5 miles south of Sugar Loaf Cone on the main 

 Island. From the cleft and blackened fissure near the summit of this 

 serrated pinnacle rock volcanic fire and puffs of black smoke have 

 been recorded as issuing. 



Our first landing, early in the morning of August 5, was at the 

 slope of Cub Hill, near Cape Upright, the easternmost point of the 

 island. The air, coming out from the northwest, was cold and chilly, 

 and snow and ice were on the hillsides and in the gullies. The slop- 

 ing sides and summits of the hills were of a grayish, russet tinge, 

 with deep green swale flats running down into the lowlands, which 

 are there more intensely green and warmer in tone. The pebble bar, 

 formed by the sea between Cape Upright and Waterfall Head, is 

 covered with a deep stratum of glacial drift, carried down from the 

 flanks of Polar and Cub hills and extending over 2 miles of this water 

 front to the westward, where it is met by a similar washing from that 

 quarter. Back and in the center of this neck are several small lakes 

 and lagoons, without fish; but emptying into them are a number of 

 clear, lively brooks, in which were salmon parr of fine quality. The 

 little lakes undoubtedly receive them, and hence they were land-locked 

 salmon. A luxuriant growth of thick moss and grass, interspersed, 

 existed almost everywhere on the lowest ground, and occasionallj^ 

 strange dome-like piles of i3eat were lifted 4 or 5 feet above the 

 marshy swale and appeared so remarkably like abandoned barra- 

 baras that we repeatedly turned from our course personally to satisfy 

 ourselves to the contrary. 



Changing vegetation. — As these lowlands ascend to the tops of 

 the hills the vegetation changes rapidly to a simple coat of crypto- 

 gamic gray and light russet, with a slippery slide for the foot wher- 

 ever a steep flight or climbing was made. Water oozes and trickles 

 everywhere under foot, since an exhalation of frost is in progress all 

 the time. Sometimes the swales rise and cross the hill summits to 

 the valleys again, without any interruption in their wet, swampy 

 character. 



Lairs of the polar bear. — Here, on the highest points, where no 

 moss ever grows and nothing but a fine porphyritic shingle slides and 

 rattles beneath our tread, are bear roads leading from nest to nest, or 

 lairs, which they have scooped out of frost-splintered rocks on the 

 hillsides, and where the she bears undoubtedly bring forth their young j 



