160 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



despoiled and ravished natives arose in every one of the then popu- 

 lous Oonalashkan settlements (twenty-four villages), nocked to- 

 gether, and unitedly fell upon their oppressors. They slaughtered 

 every man except four, who happened, luckily for them, to have 

 been absent from their vessels in Chernovsky Harbor, hunting 

 grouse in the mountains. They were secreted in the recesses of a 

 hot cave (that is still pointed out in the flanks of Makooshin Moun- 

 tain), by the kindness of a charitable native, until they were able 

 to escape and join the expedition of Solovaiyah, which appeared at 

 the offing of Oomnak early in the following year. Fired by a 

 recital of the Drooshinnin slaughter, this fierce Cossack turned his 

 half-savage comrades, and worse yet, himself, loose upon the un- 

 happy people of Oonalashka, and literally exterminated every male, 

 old and young, that he could find, visiting each settlement in swift 

 rotation of death and desolation. The men and boys fled to the 

 fastnesses of the interior, followed by many of the women, and 

 when the inclemencies of winter began to threaten their starvation, 

 they humbly sued for peace, and became the abject and submissive 

 vassals of the promishlyniks ever after. 



A smoking volcano that rears its ragged crown high above all 

 the surrounding hills and peaks is Makooshin ; it juts, alone and 

 unsupported, as a bold promontory, five thousand four hundred 

 and seventy-five feet above, and into the green waters of Bering 

 Sea. It is the chief point of scenic interest on Oonalashka Island, 

 and the objective one in particular, if the day be clear, as the 

 visitor sails up and into the harbor of Illoolook. While it is not 

 near so majestic in elevation, or perfect of outline, as the Shishal- 

 din Mountain, yet it is wild and striking. It can be easily ascended 

 in July and August, when the winds do not blow their hardest, and 

 when there is the least snow. No one remembers, nor is there any 

 legend of any disturbance more serious than the shaking of the 

 earth and loud noises which Makooshin is charged with. In 1818 

 it made the whole island tremble violently during a period of sev- 

 eral days, emitting, however, nothing but dense columns of smoke, 

 and fine ashes were sifted lightly everywhere with the winds. A 

 resounding cannonade that then burst from its bowels sorely alarmed 

 the people, however, who fled from their little hamlets clustered at 

 its base. 



Immediately under the steep slopes and large proportions of this 

 quiescent volcano is a small settlement of sixty natives, housed in 



