MORSE AND MAHLEMOOT. 



461 



Unless we spend a winter in the Arctic Ocean above Bering 

 Straits we will not be able to see a polar bear ; but there is one place, 

 and one place only, in Alaska where in midsummer we can land, 

 and there behold on its swelling, green, and flowery uplands hun- 

 dreds of these huge ursine brutes. That place is the island of St. 

 Matthew, and it is right in our path as we leave St. Lawrence and 

 head for Oonimak Pass and home. 



St. Matthew Island is an odd, jagged, straggling reach of bluffs 

 and headlands, connected by bars and lowland spits. The former, 

 seen at a little distance out at sea, resemble half a dozen distinct isl- 



Mahlemoots Landing a Walrus. 

 [An Innuit " double purchase" St. Lawrence Island.} 



ands. The extreme length is twenty-two miles, and it is exceedingly 

 narrow in proportion. Hall Island is a small one that lies west from 

 it, separated from it by a strait (Sarichev) less than three miles in 

 width, while the only other outlying land is a sharp, jagged pinna- 

 cle-rock, rearing itself over a thousand feet abruptly from the sea, 

 standing five miles south of Sugar-loaf Cone on the main island. 

 From a cleft and blackened fissure, near the summit of this ser- 

 rated pinnacle-rock, volcanic fire and puffs of black smoke have been 

 recorded as issuing when first discovered, and they have issued ever 

 since. 



Our first landing, early in the morning of August 5th, was at the 

 spot under Cub Hill, near Cape Upright, the easternmost point of 



