42 FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OP ALASKA. 



and soutlieastward, sharp off into the sea, presenting a bluff margin 

 over a mile in length, at the base of which the sea thunders incessantly. 

 It exhibits a very beautiful geological section of the simple structure 

 of St. Paul. The ringing, iron-like basaltic foundations of the island 

 are here setting boldly up from the sea to a height of 40 or 50 feet, 

 black and purplish red, polished like ebony by the friction of the surf 

 and worn by its agency into grotesque arches, tiny caverns, and deep 

 fissures. Surmounting this lava bed is a cap of ferruginous cement 

 and tufa from 3 to lOfeet in thickness, making a reddish floor upon 

 which the seals patter in their restless, never-ceasing evolutions, sleep- 

 ing or waking, on the land. It is as great a single parade plateau of 

 polished cement as is that of the Eeef : but, we are unable from any 

 point of observation, to aj)preciate it, inasmuch as we can not stand 

 high enough to overlook it unless we ascend Polavina Sopka, and then 

 the distances, with the perspective foreshortening, destroy the effect. 



The rookery itself, occupies only a sumll portion of tlie seal-visited 

 area at this spot. It is placed at the southern termination and gentle 

 sloping of the long reach of bluff wall, which is the only cliff between 

 Lukannon and I^ovavStoshnah. It presents itself to the eye, however, 

 in a very peculiar manner, and with great scenic effect when the 

 observer scans it from the southern point of its mural elevation ; viewed 

 from thence, nearly a mile to the northeast, it rises as a front of bicolored 

 lava wall, high above the sea that is breaking at its base, and is covered 

 with an infinite detail of massed seals in reproduction. At first sight 

 one Avonders how they got there; no passages whatever can be seen, 

 down or up. A further survey, however, discloses the common occur- 

 rence of rain-water runs between surf-beaten crevices, which make 

 many stairways for the adhesive feet of Callorhinnn, amply safe and 

 comfortable. 



For the reason cited in a similar exami)le at Zapadnie, no hollus- 

 chickie have been driven from this point since 1S7L*, though it is one 

 of the easiest worked. It was, in the Eussian times, a pet sealing 

 ground with them. The remains of the old village have nearly all been 

 buried in the sand near the lake, and there is really no mark of its early 

 habitation, unless it be the singular effect of a human graveyard being 

 dug out and desi)oiled by the attrition of seal bodies and flippers. The 

 old cemetery just above and to the right of the barrabkie, near the little 

 lake, was originally established, so the natives told me, far away from 

 the hauling of the holluschickie. It was, Avhen I saw it in 1870, in a 

 melancholy state of ruin. A thousand young seals at least moved off 

 from its surface as I came up, and they had actually trampled out many 

 sandy graves, rolling the bones and skulls of Aleutian ancestry in 

 every direction. Beyond this old bari-abkie, which the present natives 

 have established as a house of retuge for the winter when they are 



ract; and I have heard it, with a light fair wind to the leeward, as far as 6 miles 

 out from laud on the sea; and even in the thunder of the surf and the roar of heavy 

 sales it would rise up and over to your ear for ((uite a considerable distance away. 

 It was the monitor which "the sea captains anxiously strained their ears for when 

 they ran their dead reckoning up and were laying to lor the fog to rise in order that 

 they might get their bearings of the land. Once heard they held on to the sound 

 and felt their way in to anchor. The seal roar at Novastoshnah during the summer 

 of 1872 saved the lift'of thosui'geon and six natives belonging to the island, who had 

 pushed out on an egging trip from Northeast Point to Walrus Island. I have some- 

 times thought, as I have listened through tlie night to this volume of extraordinary 

 sound, which never ceases witli the rising or the setting of the sun throughout the 

 entire season of breeding, that it was fully ecjual to the churning boom of the waves 

 of Niagara. Night and day, throughout the season of 1872, this din ujion the rook- 

 eries was steady and constant. 



