350 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



characteristic Russian crosses and faded pictures of the saints, is plainly 

 marked on the ridj^^e. It was at this little bight of sandy landing that 

 Pribilov's men first came ashore and took possession of the islaud, while 

 some others, in the same season proceeded to JSfortheast Point, aud to tbe 

 north shore to establish settlements of their own order. When the 

 indiscriminate sealing of 1808 was in progress, one of the parties lived 

 here, and a salt house, which was then erected by tbem, still stands. It 

 is in a very fair state of preservation, although it has never been since 

 occupied, except by the natives who come over here from the village in 

 the summer to pick the berries of the Einpetrum and Ruhus, which 

 abound in the greatest profusion around the rough aud rocky flats that 

 environ the little lake adjacent. The young people of St. Paul are very 

 fond of this berry festival, so called among themselves, and they stay 

 here every August, camping out a week or ten days at a time, before 

 returning to their homes in the village. 



Zapadnie rookery has, the two wings included, 5,880 feet of sea 

 margin, with an average depth of 150 feet, making ground for 441,000 

 breeding seals and their young, being the second rookery on the islaud 

 as to size and importance. 



The hoUuschickie that sport here on the parade plateau, and indeed 

 over all of the western extent of the English Bay hauling grounds, 

 have never been visited by the natives for the purpose of selecting 

 killing drives since 1872, inasmuch as more seals than were wanted 

 have always been procured from Zoltoi, Lukannon, and Lower Tolstoi 

 points, which are all very close to the village. I have been told, since 

 making this survey, that during the past year the breeding seals of 

 Zapadnie have overflowed, so as to occupy all of the sand strip which 

 is vacant between them on the accompanying map. 



ZAPADNIE ROOKERY (1890). 

 \_Its condition and appearance July, 1S90.'\ 



It is impossible to convey that full sense of utter desolation which 

 the vacant seal area of 1872 on this fine rookery aroused in my mind 

 last July, while then making my survey of it. Grass and flowers 

 springing up over those broad areas back of the breeding grounds here, 

 where in 1872-1874, thousands upon thousands of young male seals 

 hauled out and over, throughout the entire season, and were undisturbed 

 by any man, not even visited by any one except myself ! No one then 

 even thought of such a thing as coming over from the village to make 

 a killing at Zapadnie, there being more seals than wanted then close 

 by at Tolstoi, Lukannon, and Zoltoi sands. This not alone, but that 

 splendid, once clean-swept expanse of hauling ground in English Bay 

 between the Zapadnies and Tolstoi, is all grass groicn today except 

 over its areas of drifting sand, with mosses, lichens, and flowers inter- 

 spersed ! It is entirely bare of seals save a lonely pod under Middle 

 Hill. 



Lower Zapadnie is certainly the roughest surfaced breeding ground 

 peculiar to the seal islands : and it is a curious place on which to view 

 the seals as they locate themselves, for as you walk along they sud- 

 denly appear and disappear as they lay in those queer little valleys and 

 canyons here, which have been formed by lava bubbles of the geolog- 

 ical time of the elevation of St. Paul Island from the sea. But to-day, 

 so scant is the massing of the breeding seals here, that that unbroken 

 uproar which boomed out from them in 1872 is wholly absent; it is 



