WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 197 



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. AVhen 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 ther- 

 mometer to rise to ()0° and 64° in the shade, while the natives 

 crawled out of that fervent and unwonted heat, anathematizing its 

 brilliancy and potency. Sunshine 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 Aleutes and i^innipedia, to 

 whom the ordinary atmosphere is much more agreeable. 



It is astonishing how rapidly snow melts here. This is due, 

 probably, to the saline character of the air, for when the tempera- 

 ture is only a single degree above freezing, and after several suc- 

 cessive days in April or May, at 34° and 36°, grass begins to grow, 

 even if it be under melting drifts, and the frost has penetrated the 

 ground many feet below. I have said that this hvimidity and fog, 

 so strongly and peculiarly characteristic of the Pribylov group, was 

 due to the warmer ocean-currents setting up from the coast of 

 Japan, trending to the Arctic through Bering's Straits, and de- 

 flected to the southward into the North Pacific, laving, as it flows, 

 the numerous passes and channels of the great Aleutian chain ; l)ut 

 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 to the north, such as mariners and liydrog- 

 raphers recognize upon the Atlantic coast. I do not believe that 

 there is anything of the kind equal to it in Bering Sea. I believe, 

 however, that there is a steady set up to the northward from south- 

 ward around the Seal Islands, which is confiuiied through Bering's 

 Straits, and drifts steadily off up 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," and ploughed every square rod of that superficial marine 

 area -with their adventurous keels. While no two, perhaps, of those 

 old whaling captains living to-day will agree as to the exact course 

 of tides,* for Alaskan tides do not seem to obey any law, they all 



*Tlie rise and fall of tide at the Seal Islands I carefully watched one 

 whole season at St. Paul. The irregularity, liowever, of ebb and How is the 



