KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[January, 1907. 



Old BoKoslof, or Castle Island. 



(From "Tin- F.^l-i'l''! Sdcitu- Monthly." AVk' Yoih\) 



Bogoslof of May, 1906. From New Bogoslof, or Fire Island. 



(From " Flic Popular Science Monthly," Netv Yorli ) 



The Three Bogoslofs, May, 1906 



(From "The Popular Science Monthly," .Vcr;' York.) 



SO that astonishing changes may be looked 

 for at any time. 



Tiic oldest Hogoslol, now called Castle 

 Island, rose from the sea in 1796; and 

 Rotzcbiic describes the first glimp.se of it, 

 as .socn by a trader, named Krinkof, who 

 had Im'cii forcecl lo seek refuge from a storm 

 in a iiciglibouring island. The birth of the 

 \()lcanic islet was accoin])aniod by an carth- 

 C|ii;ike which shook the island where the 

 traders had t:d<en refuge, and by an out- 

 burst of lire with thunderous explosions. 

 The island was said to emit fire for months 

 afterwards, and for eight years afterwards 

 the water round it was warm and its ashes 

 unbearably hot. The eruption of 1883, in 

 w hich the .second Hogoslof, called Fire 

 Island, wa.s born, had no witnesses ; but in 

 September of that year great volumes of 

 steam and smoke, accompanied by showers 

 of ashes, were thrown out from the summit 

 and through fissures in the sides and base, 

 the bright reflections from the heated 

 interior being visible at night. At the time 

 of this eruption a .severe earthquake was 

 fi'lt in the .sea off Cape Mendocino, appar- 

 ently in the line of the Portola-Tomales rift, 

 of April, 1906. 



The islands were visited in 1884 by the 

 officers of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Corwin, 

 and Lieutenant J. C. Cantwell and Surgeon 

 H. \\'. Remans made the ascent of New 

 Bogoslof. Lieutenant Cantwell thus de- 

 scribes his experience in the '' Cruise of the 

 Corwin " : — 



The sides of New Bogoslof rise with a gentle 

 slope to the crater. The ascent at first appears 

 easy, but a thin layer of ashes, formed into a 

 crust by the action of rain and moisture, is not 

 strong enough to sustain a man's weight. At 

 every step my feet crushed through the outer 

 covering and I sank at lirst anfcle deep, and 

 later on knee deep, into a soft, almost impalp- 

 able dust, which arose in clouds and nearly 

 suffocated me. As the summit was reached the 

 heat of the ashes became unbearable. . . On 

 all sides of the cone there are openings through 

 which steam escaped with more or less energy. 



Seven years after that, Drs. Merriam and 

 Mendenhall, of the Behring Sea Seal Com- 

 mission, found the newer island still smok- 

 ing, steaming, and occasionally roaring like 

 a giant steam escape. The older island had 

 quite cooled, and had become a sheer cliff 

 or hill of cold ashes, and was, and is, the 

 home of countless sea birds, as well as of a 

 small herd of sea lions. Captain Cook, in 

 the eighteenth century, had passed by the 

 neighbourhood of this island. Tliis was 

 eighteen years, however, before it was born, 

 and he named a pillar of ash or rock which 

 he foimd there Ship Rock. Ship Rock fell 

 in ruins fi\e vears after the birth of Fire 

 Island. 



The question which naturally arises is 

 whether the rise of the newest Bogoslof was 

 directly connected with the Californian 

 earthquake. The possibility, remark Pro- 

 fessor Starr Jordan and Mr. Archibald 

 Clark, in the article from which we have 

 quoted, " is heightened bv the fact that the 



