APPENDIX 



SAINT MATTHEWS ISLAND, BERING'S SEA. 



This island lies about 2C0 miles north-Dorthwest from Saint 

 Paul's, and is not large, being some 22 miles in length and ex- 

 cessively narrow in proportion. Hall's, a small island, lies west 

 from it, separated by a strait less than 3 miles in width, and a 

 sharp jagged rock stands out some 1,200 feet abruptly from the 

 sea, 5 miles south of Sugarloaf Cone. 



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

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

 the island ; theair coming in from the northwest was cold and 

 chilly^ and snow and ice were on the hill-sides and in the 

 gullies. The hillsides and summits were of a grayish-russet 

 tinge, with rich green swale-slopes running down into the low- 

 lands, which are more intensely green and warm in tone there. 



The island everywhere presents the appearance of a long 

 straggling reach of bluffs and headlands connected with bars 

 and lowland spits, at a small distance resembling half a dozen 

 distinct islands, when seen from the ship. 



The pebble-bar formed by the sea between Cape Upright and 

 Waterfall Heads is covered with a deep stratum of glacial drift 

 carried down from the slopes of Polar and Cub Hills, and ex- 

 tending over two 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 fresh lakes and 

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

 clear, lively brooks in which are brook-trout of large size and 

 fine quality. A luxuriant growth of deep moss and grass inter- 

 spersed exists on the lowest ground, and occasionally strange 

 dome-like piles of peat lifted lour or five feet above the marshy 

 swale appear like abandoned huts, with a great variety of pretty 

 flowers, growing thickly everywhere on these places. 



As these lowlands rise on to the flanks of the hills th-e vegeta- 

 tion changes rapidly to a simple coat of cryptogamic gray and 

 light russet, with a slippery slide for the foot wherever ascent 



