198 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



affirm the existence of a steady current, passing up from the south 

 to the northeast, through Bering's Straits. The flow is not rapid, 

 and is doubtless checked at times, for short intervals, by other 

 causes, which need not be discussed here. It is certain, however, 

 that there is warm water enough, abnormal to the latitude, for the 

 evolution of those characteristic fog-banks, which almost discomfited 

 Pribylov, at the time of his discovery of the islands, nearly one hun- 

 dred years ago, and which have remained ever since. 



Without this fog the fur-seal would never have rested there as 

 he has done ; but when he came on his voyage of discovery, ages 

 ago, up from the rocky coasts of Patagonia mayhap, had he not 

 found this cool, moist temperature of St. Paul and St. George, he 

 would have kept on, completed the circuit, and returned to those 

 congenial antipodes of his birth. 



Speaking of the stormy weather brings to my mind the beauti- 

 ful, varied, and impressive nephelogical display in the heavens over- 

 head here during October and November. I may say, without ex- 

 aggeration, that the cloud-effects which I have witnessed from the 

 bluffs of this little island, at this season of the year, surpass any- 

 thing that I had ever seen before. Perhaps the mighty masses of 

 cumuli, deriving their, origin from warm exhalations out of the sea, 

 and swelled and whirled with such rapidity, in spite of their appear- 

 ance of solidity, across the horizon, owe their striking brilliancy of 

 color and prismatic tones to that low declination of the sun due to 

 the latitude. Whatever the cause may be, and this is not the place 

 to discuss it, certainly no other spot on earth can boast of a more 

 striking and brilliant cloud-display. In the season of 1865-66, 

 when I was encamped on this same parallel of latitude in the moun- 

 tains eastward of Sitka and the interior, I was particularly attracted 

 by an exceeding brilliancy, persistency, and activity of the aurora ; 

 but here on St. Paul, though I eagerly looked for its dancing light, 

 it seldom appeared ; and when it did it was a sad disappointment, 

 the exhibition always being insignificant as compared in my 

 mind with its flashing of my previous experience. A quaint old 

 writer, a hundred years ago, was describing Norway and its peo- 



most prominent feature of the matter. The highest rise in the spring-tides 

 was a trifle over four feet, while that of ,the neap-tides not much over two. 

 Owing to the nature of the case, it is impossible to prepare a tidal calendar for 

 Alaska, above the Aleutian Islands, which will even faintly foreshadow a cor- 

 rect registration in advance. 



