184 OUR AKCTIC PROVINCE. 



and solid banks of fog are pressed against its volcanic sides, and 

 hang around its glittering white head, so that the full impression 

 of its grandeur cannot strike us as we gaze at its defiant presence, 

 where, unsupported, it alone beats back the swell of a vast ocean. 



That cluster of islands which stand between Goreloi and Attoo 

 is an aggregate of cold volcanic peaks — Amchitka and Kyska being 

 the largest — the Seven Peaks, or Semiseisopochnoi, smoking a 

 little, all the rest entirely quiet. They offer no hospitality to a 

 traveller, and the natives have done wisely in abandoning these sav- 

 age island-solitudes to reside at Nazan Bay, where the country has 

 a most genial aspect, and many stretches of warm sand-dune tracts 

 are found, ui^on which vegetation springs into luxuriant life. Here, 

 also, quite a herd of Kamchatkan cattle were cared for when the 

 Russian regime was in vogue. This stock-raising effort was not a 

 practical success, however, and the last of the bovine race disap- 

 peared very shortly after the country changed ownership. Goats 

 were also introduced here, as well as elsewhere throughout the fur- 

 trading posts of the old company in Alaska ; but the morbid j^ro- 

 pensity of those pugnacious little animals to feed upon the grasses 

 which grow over roofs of the barraboras, and thus break in and 

 otherwise damage such earthen tenements, made them so unpopular 

 that their propagation was energetically and successfully discour- 

 aged by the suffering Aleutes. 



Two hundred miles of uninhabited waste extends between the 

 natives of Atkha and their nearest neighbors, the villagers of Nikol- 

 sky, who live in a small, sheltered bight of the southwest shore of 

 Oomuak. This is one of the largest islands of the whole Aleutian 

 group, very mountainous, with three commanding, overlooking 

 peaks that are most imposing in their rugged elevation. Several 

 large lakes nestle in their hilly arms, and feed salmon rivulets that 

 rush in giddy rapids and cascades down to the ocean. Everything 

 grows at Oomnak which we have noticed on its sister island of 

 Oonalashka, exce^Dt the willow ; while cross and red foxes are much 

 more abundant here than at any other place in the whole archipel- 

 ago. A great many hot springs boil up on the north side, and only 

 as recently as 1878 a decided volcanic shock was experienced, which 

 resulted in the ui^heaval of a small mud-crater between the vil- 

 lage and Toolieskoi Sopka, a huge fire-mountain of the middle 

 interior. Subterranean noises and tremors of the earth are chronic 

 phenomena here, but the natives pay no attention to them. They 



