228 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



white, but most of them exceedingly porous and ferruginous.* 

 Upon this solid floor are many hills of brown and red tufa, cinder- 

 heaps, etc. Polavina Sopka, the second point in elevation on St. 

 Paul Island, is almost entirely built up of red scoria and breccia ; 

 so is Ahluckeyak Hill, on St. George, and the cap to the high bluffs 

 opposite. The village hill at St. Paul, Cone hill, the Einahnuhto 

 peaks, Crater Hill, North Hill, and Little Polavina are all ash-heaps 

 of this character. The bluffs at the shore of Polavina Point, St. 

 Paul, show in a striking manner a section of the geological struct- 

 ure of the island. The tufas on both islands, at the surface, de- 

 compose and weather into the base of good soil, which the severe 

 climate, however, renders useless to good husbandmen. There is 

 not a trace of granitic or of gneissoid rocks found in situ. Meta- 

 morphic boulders have been collected along the beaches and 

 pushed up by heavy ice-floes which have brought them down from 



* The profile of the coast of St. George's Island, which I give on the map, 

 presents clearly an idea of its characteristic, bold, abrupt elevation from the 

 sea. From the Garden Cove around to Zapadnie beach there is no natural 

 opportunity for a man to land ; then , again, from Zapadnie beach round to 

 Starry Arteel there is not a sign of a chance for an agile man to come ashore 

 and reach the plateau above. From Starry Arteel to the Great Eastern rookery 

 there is an alternation, between the several breeding-grounds, of three low 

 and gradual slopes of the land to sea-level ; these, with the landing at Garden 

 Cove and at Zapadnie, are the only spots of the St. George coast where we can 

 come ashore. An active person can scramble up at several steep places be- 

 tween the Sea Lion rookery and Tolstoi Mees, but the rest of that extended 

 bluffy sea-wall, which I have just defined, is wholly inaccessible from the 

 water. A narrow strip of rough, rocky shingle, washed over by every storm- 

 beaten sea, is all that lies beneath the mural precipices. 



In the spring, when snow melts on the high plateau, a beautiful cascade 

 is seen at Waterfall Head ; its feathery, filmy, silver ribbon of plunging water 

 is thrown out into exquisite relief by the rich background of that brownish 

 basalt and tufa over which it drops. Another pretty little waterfall is to be 

 seen just west of the village, at this season only, where it leaps from a low 

 range of bluffs to the sea. The first-named cascade is more than four hun- 

 dred feet in sheer unbroken precipitation. 



One or two small, naked, pinnacle rocks, standing close in, and almost 

 joined to the beach at the Sea Lion rookery, constitute the only outlying islets 

 or rocks ; a stony kelp-bed at Zapadnie, and one off the Little Eastern rook 

 ery, both of limited reach seaward, are the only hindrances to a ship's sailing 

 boldly round the island, even to scraping the bluffs, at places, safely with her 

 yard-arms. I have located the Zapadnie shoal by observation from the bluffs 

 above ; while Captain Baker, of the Reliance, sounded out the other. 



