WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 201 



lemon-yellows, and grays of the lichen-covered rocks, and the 

 brownish-purple of the wild wheat on the sand-dune tracts in 

 autumn, together, also, with innumerable blue, yellow, pink, and 

 white phaenogamous blossoms, everywhere interspersed over the 

 grassy uplands and sandy flats. Occasionally, on looking into the 

 thickest masses of verdure, our common wild violet will be found, 

 while the phloxes are especially bright and brilliant here. The 

 flowers of one species of gentian, Gentiana verna are very marked 

 in their beauty ; also those of a nasturtium, and a creeping pea- vine 

 on the sand-dunes. The blossom of a species of the pulse family 

 is the only one here that emits a positive, rich perfume ; the 

 others are more suggestive of that quality than expressive. The 

 most striking plant in all of a long list is the Archangelica offici- 

 nalis, with its tall seed-stalks and broad leaves, which grows first 

 in spring and keeps green latest in the fall. The luxuriant rhu- 

 barb-like stems of this umbellifer, after they have made their rapid 

 growth in June, are eagerly sought for by the natives, who pull 

 them and crunch them between their teeth with all the relish that 

 we experience in eating celery. The exhibition of ferns at Kam- 

 minista, St. Paul, during the summer of 1872, surpassed anything 

 that I ever saw : I recall with vivid detail the exceedingly fine dis- 

 play made by these luxuriant and waving fronds, as they reared 

 themselves above the rough interstices of that rocky ridge. From 

 the fern roots, and those of the gentian, the natives here draw their 

 entire stock of vegetable medicines. This floral display on St. Paul 

 is very much more extensive and conspicuous than that on St. 

 George, owing to the absence of any noteworthy extent of warm 

 sand-dune country on the latter island. 



When an unusually warm summer passes over the Pribylov 

 group, followed by an open fall and a mild winter, the elymus 

 ripens its seed, and stands like fields of uncut grain in many places 

 along the north shore of St. Paul and around the village, the snow 

 not falling enough to entirely obliterate it ; but it is seldom allowed 

 to flourish to that extent. By the end of August and the first week 

 of September of normal seasons, the small edible berries of Empe- 

 trum nigrum and Rubus chamcemorus are ripe. They are found in 

 considerable quantities, especially at "Zapadnie," on both islands, 

 and, as everywhere else throughout circumpolar latitudes, the 

 former is small, watery, and dark, about the size of an English or 

 black currant ; the other resembles an unripe and partially decayed 



