IN GREEN ALASKA 



presenting a mighty bowl, fluted and scalloped and 

 opening on one side through a sweep of valley to the 

 sea, then a creased and wrinkled lawn at an angle of 

 forty-five degrees and miles in extent. The motion- 

 less ice sheets we had seen farther north flowing 

 down out of the mountains were here simulateil by 

 grassy billows flowing down out of the hills. Green, 

 white, and blue are the three prevailing tints all the 

 way from Cook Inlet to Unalaska ; blue of the sea 

 and sky, green of the shores and lower slopes, and 

 white of the lofty peaks and volcanic cones, — they 

 are mingled and contrasted all the way. 



Was it on this day also that my eye dwelt so long 

 and so fondly upon what appeared to be another 

 architectural ruin, abutting on the sea and bathed in 

 the soft light of the late afternoon sun ? Was it some 

 old abbey, or was it some unfinished temple to the 

 gods of the mountain ? Two spires, one at either end, 

 stood up many hundred feet, one slender and taper- 

 ing to a blunt point, with the suggestion of a recess 

 for a bell, the other heavy and massive, and evidently 

 only a stump of what it had been ; the roof vast and 

 sloping, the upper story with its windows rudely 

 outlined, and the lower merged in a mass of gray, 

 un carved rock. 



Before nightfall we passed two more notable vol- 

 canic peaks, Isanotski and Shishaldin, both of which 

 penetrate the clouds at an altitude of nearly nine 

 thousand feet. These are on Unimak Island at tlip 



97 



