THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 9 



Bering sea from the straits above. His ill-success does not now seem strange, when we understand the currents, the 

 winds, and fogs of those waters. Why, only recently the writer himself has been on one of the best-manned vessels 

 that ever sailed from any port, provided with good charts, and equipped with all the marine machinery known to 

 navigation, and that vessel has hovered for nine successive days off the north point and around St. Paul island, 

 sometimes almost on the reef, and never more than ten miles away, without actually knowing where the island 

 was ! So Pribylov did well, considering, when at the beginning of the third summer's tedious search, in June, 17SG, 

 his old sloop ran up against the walls of Tolstoi Mees, at St. George, and when, though the fog was so thick that 

 hi' could see scarce the length of his vessel, his ears were regaled by tin' sweet music of seal-rookeries wafted out 

 to him on the heavy air. He knew then that he had found the object of his search, and he at once took possession 

 of the island in the Russian name and that of his craft. 



His secret could not long be kept. He had left some of his men behind him to hold the island, and when he 

 returned to Qoualashka they were gone. And, when the nest season had fairly opened, a dozen vessels were 

 watching him and trimming in his wake. Of course they all found the island, and in that year, July, 17S7, the 

 Bailors of Pribylov, on St. George, while climbing the bluffs and straining their eyes for a relief-ship, descried the 

 low coast and scattered cones of St. Paul, thirty-six miles to the northwest of them. When they landed at St. 

 George, not a sign nor a vestige of human habitation was found thereon; but during the succeeding year, when they 

 crossed over to St. Paul, and took possession of it, in turn, they were surprised at finding on the south coast of that 

 island, at a point now known as English bay, the remains of a recent fire. There were charred embers of driftwood, 

 and places where grass had been scorched; there was a pipe, and a brass knife handle, which I regret to say have 

 long passed beyond the cognizance of any ethnologist. This much appears in the Russian records. 



4. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIBYLOV ISLANDS. 



The Pribylov islands lie in the heart of Bering sea, and are among the most insignificant landmarks known 

 in that ocean. They are situated 192 miles north of Oonalashka, 200 miles south of St. Matthews, and about the 

 same distance westward of cape Newenham on the mainland. 



Climate. — The islands of St. George and St. Paul are from twenty seven to thirty miles apart, St. George 

 lying southeastward of St. Paul. They are far enough south to be beyond the reach of permanent ice-floes, upon 

 which polar bears could have made their way to the islands, though a few of these animals were, doubtless, always 

 present. They laid also distant enough from the inhabited Aleutian districts and the coast of the mainland 

 to have remained unknown to savage men. Hence they afforded the fur-seal the happiest shelter and isolation, 

 for their position seems to be such as to surround and envelop them with teg banks that fairly shut out the sun 

 nine days in every ten, during the summer and breeding-season. 



In this location, ocean-currents from the great Pacific, warmer than the normal temperature of that latitude, 

 trending up from southward, ebb and flow around the islands as they pass, giving rise, during the summer and 

 early autumn, to constant, dense, humid fog and drizzling mists, which hang in heavy hanks over the islands and the 

 sea line, seldom dissolving away to indicate a pleasant day. By the middle or end of October, strong, cold winds, 

 refrigerated on the Siberian steppes, sweep down across the islands, carrying off the moisture and clearing up the 

 air. By the end of January, or early in February, they usually bring, by their steady pressure, from the north and 

 northwest, groat fields of broken ice, sludgy floes, with nothing in them approximating or approaching glacial ice. 

 They are not very heavy or thick, but still as the wind blows they compactly cover the whole surface of the sea, 

 completely shutting in the land, and for months at a time hushing the wonted roar of the surf. In the exceptionally 

 cold seasons that succeed each other up there every four or five years, for periods of three and even four months — 

 from December to May, and sometimes into June — the islands will be completely environed and ice-bound. On 

 the other hand, in about the same rotation, occur the exceptionally mild winters. Not even the sight of an ice-floe 

 is recorded during the whole winter, and there is very little skating on the shallow lakes and lagoons peculiar to 

 St. Paul and St George. This, however, is not often the ease. 



The breaking-up of winter-weather and the precipitation of summer (for there is no real spring or autumn in 

 these latitudes), usually commences about the first week in April. The ice begins to leave or dissolve at that time, 

 or a little later, so that by the 1st or 5th of May, the beaches and rocky sea-margin beneath the mural precipices 

 are generally clear and free from ice and snow, although the latter occasionally lies, until the end of July or the 

 middle of August, in gullies and on leeward hill-slopes, where it has drifted during the winter. Fog, thick 

 and heavy, rolls up from the sea, and closes over the land about the end of May ; this, the habitual sign of summer, 

 holds on steadily to the middle or end of October again. 



The periods of change in climate are exceedingly irregular during the autumn and spring, so-called, but iu 

 summer the cool, moist, shady, gray fog is constantly present. To this certainty of favored climate, coupled with 

 the perfect isolation and the exceeding fitness of the ground, is due without doubt, that preference manifested by 

 the warm-blooded animals which come here every year, in thousands and hundreds of thousands, to breed, to the 

 practical exclusion of all other ground. 



