162 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



many folk-lore stories and legends which belong to the mountain ; 

 but these yarns are like the ballads of our sailor boys, they run on 

 forever, ending in the same manner as they began. A hot spring 

 sends a little rivulet of warm water across our path as we come 

 down, and we notice that most of the boggy places are tinged with 

 iron oxides. 



In over-looking any of these islands from an interior view of 

 high altitude, you are impressed by the large number of fresh-water 

 lakes and ponds that nestle in the valleys, in the uplands, and even 

 in the depressions on the loftiest summits. One of the prettiest 

 pools of water which can be imagined is formed by the red, bowl- 

 shaped walls of an extinct crater that makes the top of Paistrakov 

 Mountain : this is a very prominent landmark just across the bay 

 from Oonalashka village, looking west. 



A superb survey of Oonalashka Island can be made by the as- 

 cent of Mount Wood, which rears its sharp, syenitic peak two thou- 

 sand eight hundred feet behind and right over the village and har- 

 bor of Illoolook. The path to the summit is not difficult, and the 

 panorama spread out under your eyes well repays the effort. It 

 gives you a better idea of what a singularly mountainous region the 

 island is, of the comparative absence of level or bottom-land areas 

 everything seems to spring from the surrounding ocean mirror, 

 to hills from hills, in turn, to mountains that end in sharp and 

 rugged peaks. Upon the rocky, frost-riven shingle of these sum- 

 mits nothing can grow except those tiny polar lichens which we find 

 existing, clinging to the earth and rocks of the uttermost limits of 

 the North as far as we have knowledge. 



If the fog lifts its gray-blue curtain from the unruffled, clear 

 surface of Captain's Harbor, and rolls back and away from the red 

 and brown head of the cold crater of Paistrakov on the left, and 

 from the black, jagged outlines of the "Prince " on your right, you 

 will then have at your feet a picture of surpassing scenic beauty, 

 both of contour and color, before and under your delighted vision. 

 The rougher waters of Bering Sea have power no farther inland 

 than their foaming at the feet of Waterfall Head and the dark bases 

 of the Prince, for they rapidly fade into a smooth, still peace as the 

 queer, hook -like sand-spit of Oolachta Harbor is reached, and the 

 anchorage of Illoolook village is attained ; its houses and bar- 

 raboras just peep out from the obscuring foothills of the moun- 

 tain upon which we stand, and we can faintly discern a deli- 



