216 OUR ARCTIC PROVIlSrCE. 



first Tiplieaval above the sea, it doubtless presented the appeai'ance 

 of ten or twelve small rocky, bluffy islets and points, upon some of 

 which were craters that vomited breccia and cinders, with little or 

 no lava overflowing. Active plutonic agency must have soon ceased 

 after this elevation, and then the sea round about commenced a 

 work which it is now engaged in — of building on to the skeleton 

 thus created ; and it has progressed to-day so thoroughly and suc- 

 cessfully in its labor of sand-shifting, together with the aid of ice- 

 floes, in their action of grinding, lifting, and shoving, that nearly all 

 of these scattered islets within the present area of the island, and 

 marked by its bluffs and higher uplands, are completely bound to- 

 gether by ropes of sand, changed into enduring bars and ridges of 

 water-worn boulders. These are raised above the highest tides by 

 winds that whirl the sand up, over and on them, as it dries out 

 from the wash of the surf and from the interstices of rocks, which 

 are lifted x\-p and pushed by ice-fields. 



The sand that plays so important a part in the formation of 

 the Island of St. Paul, and which is almost entirely wanting in and 

 around the others of this Pribylov group, is principally composed 

 of Foraminifera, together with Diatomacea, mixed in with a volcanic 

 base of fine comminuted black and reddish lavas and old friable 

 gray slates. It constitutes the chief beauty of the sea-shore here, 

 for it changes color like a chameleon, as it passes from wet to dry, 

 being a rich steely-black at the surf-margin and then drying out to 

 a soft purplish-brown and gray, succeeding to tints most delicate of 

 reddish and jDale neutral, when warmed by the sun and drifting up 

 on to the higher ground with the wind. 'The sand-dune tracts on 

 this island are really attractive iii the summer, especially so during 

 those rare days Avhen the sun comes out, and the unwonted light 

 shimmers over them and the most luxuriant grass and variety of 

 beautiful flowers which exist in profusion thereon. In past time, 

 as these sand and boulder bars were forming on St. Paul Island, 

 they, in making across from islet to islet, enclosed small bodies of 

 sea-water. These have, by evaporation and time, by the flooding of 

 rains and annual melting of snow, become, nearly every one of 

 them, fresh ; they are till, great and small, well shown on my map, 

 which locates quite a large area of pure water. In them, as I have 

 hinted, are no reptiles ; but an exquisite species of a tiny fish* ex- 



*. Oasterosteus cataphractus ; and. pungitius ; beautiful sticklebacks. 



