324 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



the mean was 12 above, and I have since learned that March continues to be the meanest month 

 of the year. The lowest average of a usual winter ranges from 22 to 20 above zero; but these 

 quiet figures are simply inadequate to impress the reader with the exceeding discomfort of winter 

 in that location. It is the wind that tortures and cripples out-door exercises there, as it does on 

 all the sea-coast and islands of Alaska. It is blowing, blowing, from every point of the compass 

 and at all times ; it is an everlasting succession of furious gales, laden with snow and sleety spiculse, 

 whirling in great drifts to-day, while to-morrow the wind will blow from a quarter directly oppo- 

 site, and reverse its drift-building action of the day preceding. 



Without being cold enough to suffer, one is literally confined and chained to his room from 

 December to April by this ieolian tension. I remember very well that, during the winter of 1872-'73, 

 I was watching with all the impatience which a man in full health and tired of confinement 

 can possess, every opportunity to seize upon quiet intervals between the storms in which I could 

 make short trips out along the tracks over which I was habituated to walk during the summer; but 

 in all that hyemal season I got out but three times, and then only by theexertion of great physical 

 energy. On a day in March, for example, the velocity of the wind at Saint Paul, recorded by one of 

 the signal service anemometers, was at the rate of 88 miles per hour, with as low a temperature 

 as 4! This particular wind-storm, with snow, blew at such a velocity for six days without au 

 hour's cessation, while the natives passed fj om house to house crawling on all-fours ; no man could 

 stand up against it, and no man wanted to. At a much higher temperature say at 15 or 16 

 above zero with the wind blowing ouly 20 or 25 miles an hour, it Is necessary when journeying to 

 be most thoroughly wrapped up to guard against freezing for any journey to be made on foot. 



As I have said, there are here virtually but two seasons winter and summer. To the 

 former belong November and the following months up to the end of April, with a mean tem- 

 perature, of 20 to 28 ; while the transition of summer is but a very slight elevation of that 

 temperature, not more than 15 or 20. Of the summer months, July, perhaps, is the warmest, 

 with an average temperature between 46 and 50 in ordinary seasons. When the sun breaks out 

 through the fog, and bathes the dripping, water-soaked hills and flats of the island in its hot flood 

 of light, I have known the thermometer to rise to 60 and 64 in the shade, while the natives 

 crawled but of the fervent and unwonted heat, anathematizing its brillancy and potency. Sun- 

 shine does them no good ; for, like the seals, they seem under its influence to swell up at the neck. 

 A little of it suffices handsomely for both Aleuts and pinnipedia during the summer mouths. 



It is astonishing how rapidly snow melts here. This is due, probably, to the saline character 

 of the air; for when the temperature is only a single degree above freezing, and after several 

 successive days in April or May, at 34 and 36, grass begins to grow, even if it be below melting 

 drifts and the frost has penetrated the ground many feet below. I have said that this humidity 

 and fog, so strongly and peculiarly characteristic of the Prihylov group, was due to the warmer 

 ocean currents setting up from the coast of Japan, trending to the Arctic through Bering Strait, 

 and deflected to the southward into the North Pacific, laving, as it flows, the numerous passes 

 and channels of the great Aleutian chain ; but I do not think, nor do I wish to be understood as 

 saying, that my observation in this respect warrants any conclusion as to so large a gulf-stream 

 flowing north, such as mariners and hydrographers recognize upon the Atlantic coast. I do not 

 surmise that there is any thing of the kind equal to it in Bering Sea. I believe, however, that 

 there is a steady set up to the northward from the southward around the Seal Islands, which is 

 continued through Bering Strait, and drifts steadily off to the northeast, until it is lost beyond 

 Point Barrow. That this pelagic circulation exists, is clearly proven by the logs of the whalers, 

 who, from 1845 to 1856, literally filled the air over those waters with the smoke of their " try-fires," 



