THE FUB SEAL INDUSTRY OF ALASKA. 323 



The islands of Saiiit George aiid Saint Paul are from 27 to 30 miles apart, Saint George lying 

 to the southeastward of Saiut Paul. They are far enough south to be beyond the reach during 

 winter of permanent ice-floes, upon which polar bears would have made their way to the islands, 

 though a few of these animals were, doubtless, always present. They were also distant enough from 

 the inhabited Aleutian districts and the coast of the mainland to have remained unknown to savage 

 men. Hence they afforded the fur-seal the happiest shelter and isolation, for their position seems 

 to be such as to surround and envelop them with fog-banks that fairly shut out the sun nine days 

 in every ten, during the summer and breeding season. 



CLIMATE. In this location, ocean currents from the-great Pacific, warmer than the normal 

 temperature of this latitude, trending up from the southward, ebb and flow around the islands, as 

 they pass giving rise during the summer and early autumn to constant, dense, humid fog and 

 drizzling mists, which hang in heavy banks over the ground and the sea line seldom dissolving 

 aw;iy to indicate a pleasant day. By the middle or end of October, strong cold winds, refrigerated 

 on the Siberian steppes, sweep down over the islands, carrying off the moisture and clearing up 

 the air. By the end. of January or early in February, they usually bring, by their steady pressure 

 from the north and northwest, great fields of broken ice, sludgy floes, with nothing in them approxi- 

 mating or approaching glacial ice. They are not very heavy or thick, but as the wind blows hard 

 they compactly cover the whole surface of the sea, shutting completely in and around the land, 

 and for months at a time hushing the wonted roar of the surf. In the exceptionally cold seasons 

 that succeed each other up there every four or fire years, for periods of three and even four months 

 from December to May, and sometimes into June the islands will be completely environed and 

 ice bound. The exceptional mild winters occur on the other hand, in about the same rotation, in 

 which not even the sight of an ice-floe is recorded during the whole winter, and when there is very 

 little skating on the shallow lakes and lagoons peculiar to Saint Paul and Saint George; this, how- 

 ever, is not often the case. 



The breaking up of winter weather and the precipitation of summer (for there is no real spring 

 or autumn in these latitudes) usually commences about the first week in April. The ice begins to 

 leave or dissolve at that time, or a little later, so that by the 1st or 5th of May the beaches and 

 rocky sea-margin beneath the mural precipices are generally clear and free from ice and snow ; 

 although the latter occasionally lies in gullies and on leeward hill-slopes where it has drifted dur- 

 ing the winter, until the end of July or the middle of August. Fog, damp, thick, and heavy, rolls 

 up from the sea, and closes over the land about the end of May ; this, the habitual sign of summer, 

 holds on steadily to the middle or end of October again. 



The periods of change in climate are exceedingly irregular during the autumn and spring, so- 

 called, but in summer the cool, moist, shady, gray fog is constantly present. To this certainty of 

 favored climate, coupled with the perfect isolation and the exceeding fitness of the ground, is due, 

 without doubt, that preference manifested by the warm-blooded animals which come here every 

 year, in thousands and hundrels of thousands, to breed, to the practical exclusion of all other 

 ground. 



A large amount of information in regard to the climate of these islands has been collected and 

 recorded by the Signal Service, United States Army, and similar observations are still continued 

 by the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company. I simply remark here that the winter which 

 I passed upon Saint Paul's Island (1872-'73) was one of great severity, and, according to the natives, 

 such as is very seldom experienced. Cold as it was, however, the lowest marking by thermometer 

 was only 12 Fahr. below zero, and that lasted but a few hours during a single day in February, 

 while the mean of that month was 18 above. I found that March was the coldest month. Then 



