LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 421 



October until well into May ; but, in spite of its intense cold, there 

 are many long periods of its endurance characterized by clear, 

 lovely weather, while the wanner summer is rendered disagreeable 

 by a large number of cold misty days, rain, and gloomy palls of 

 overhanging clouds which shut down upon everything like a leaden 

 cover. 



"\V- are accustomed to associate an occurrence of a real mirage 

 with dry, arid, desert countries, where the thirsty and sun-burned 

 traveller is mocked by illusions of clear lakes and a green oasis just 

 ahead. In truth, the mirage of an Alaskan tundra in midwinter 

 is fully as remarkable, and quite as tantalizing. When the trader 

 starts out with his dog-team, on an intensely still, cold day, the vi- 

 brations of the air are so energetic that those blades of grass which 

 stick out from the snow, just ahead, seem to him like thickets of wil- 

 low- and birch-trees, around which he must make a painful detour. 

 Then, again, the ravines and valleys are transformed into vast lakes, 

 with the loftiest and most precipitous shores. On the coast here, 

 during cool, clear days in March, hills, which are thirty or seventy- 

 five miles away from the windows of Michaelovsky, are lifted up 

 and transported to the very beach of the island itself, contorted and 

 fantastic changes constantly taking place in the picture, until sud- 

 denly a slight something, or a change perhaps in an observer's 

 position, causes the singular delusion to vanish. 



St. Michael's is all by itself to-day ; yet it, at one time, was not 

 the only settlement on the island ; for, close by the fort, there were 

 two Mablemoot villages, Tahcik and Agahliak, whose inhabitants 

 were first to cordially invite the Kussians to locate here in 1835. 

 But in 1842 the ravages of small-pox absolutely depopulated these 

 native towns, and a few survivors fled in dismay from the place 

 the)* never came back, nor have their descendants returned. For 

 some reason or other the Russians made the most persistent and 

 energetic attempt to develop a successful vegetable garden in this 

 region and to keep cattle. But, beyond a small exhibit of eatable 

 cabbages, good radishes and turnips, and a few inferior potatoes, 

 grown in the warm sand-dunes of Oonalakleet, nothing more, sub- 

 stantially, ever resulted from it. 



Generally the snow falls, at Michaelovsky, as the beginning of 

 its hyemal season, about October 1st, and by October 20th ice has 

 formed, and has firmly locked up the Yukon by November 1st to 

 5th. These icy fetters break away by June 5th, and in a week or 



