WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 



it is only when three or four days have passed, free from northerly, 

 westerly, or easterly winds that she can make the first attempt to 

 safely unload. The landing here is a very bad one, surf breaking 

 most violently upon the rocks from one end of the year to the 

 other. 



The observer will notice that six miles southward and westward 

 of the reef of St. Paul Island is a bluffy islet, called by the Rus- 

 sians Bobrovia, because in olden time the promishlyniks are said 

 to have captured many thousands of sea-otters on its rocky coast. 

 It rises from the ocean, sheer and bold, an unbroken mural precipice 

 extending nearly all around, of sea-front, but dropping on its 

 northern margin, at the water, low, and slightly elevated above the 

 surf- wash, with a broken, rocky beach and no sand. The height of 



"Bobrovia," or Otter Island six miles south of St. Panl Island. 

 [The North Shore and landing, viewed, from St. Paul.] 



the bluffs at their greatest elevation over the west end is three hun- 

 dred feet, while the eastern extremity is quite low, and terminated 

 by a queer, funnel-shaped crater-hill, which is as distinctly defined, 

 and as plainly scorched and devoid of the slightest sign of vegeta- 

 tion within as though it had burned up and out yesterday. That 

 crater-point on Otter Island is the only unique feature of the place, 

 for with the exception of this low north shore, before mentioned, 

 where a few thousand of " bachelor seals " haul out during the 

 season every year, there is nothing else worthy of notice concern- 

 ing it. A bad reef makes out to the westward, which I have indi- 

 cated from my observation of the rocks awash, looking down upon 

 them from the bluffs. Great numbers of water-fowl roost upon 

 the cliffs, and there are here about as many blue foxes to the acre 

 as the law of life allows. A small, shallow pool of impure water 



