WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS. 227 



Garden Cove beach, southeast side, and less than half a mile at 

 Zapadnie on the south side. 



Just above the Garden Cove, under the overhanging bluffs, 

 several thousand sea-lions hold exclusive, though shy, possession. 

 Here there is a half-mile of good landing. On the north shore of 

 the island, three miles west from the village, a grand bluff wall of 

 basalt and tufa intercalated rises abruptly from the sea to a sheer 

 height of nine hundred and twenty feet at its reach of greatest 

 elevation : thence, dropping a little, runs clear around the "island to 

 Zapadnie, a distance of nearly ten miles, without affording a single 

 passage-way up or down to the sea that thunders at its base. Upon 

 its innumerable narrow shelf-margins, and in its countless chinks 

 and crannies, and back therefrom over an extended area of lava- 

 shingled inland ridges and terraces, millions upon millions of water- 

 fowl breed during the summer months. 



The general altitude of St. George, though in itself not great, 

 has, however, an average three times higher than that of St. Paul, 

 the elevation of which is quite low, and slopes gently down to the 

 sea east and north ; St. George rises abruptly, with exceptional 

 spots for landing. The loftiest summit on St. George, the top of 

 the hill right back to the southward of the village, is nine hundred 

 and thirty feet, and is called by the natives Ahluckeyak. That on 

 St. Paul, as I have before said, is Bogaslov Hill, six hundred feet. 

 All elevations on either island, fifteen or twenty feet above sea-level, 

 are rough and hummocky, with the exception of those sand-dune 

 tracts at St. Paul and the summits of the cinder hills, on both 

 islands. Weathered out, or washed from the basalt and pockets of 

 olivine on either island, are aggregates of augite, seen most abun- 

 dant on the summit slopes of Ahluckej^ak Hill, St. George. Speci- 

 mens from stratified bands of old, friable, gray lavas, so conspic- 

 uous on the shore of this latter island, show an existence of horn- 

 blende and vitreous felspar in considerable quantity, while on 

 the south shore, near Garden Cove, is a large dike of a bluish 

 and greenish gray phonolite, in which numerous small crystals of 

 spinel are found. A dike, with well-defined walls, of old close- 

 grained, clay-colored lava, is near the village of St. George, about 

 a quarter of a mile east from the landing, in the face of those red- 

 dish breccia bluffs that rise from the sea. It is the only example 

 of the kind on the islands. The bases or foundations of the Pribylov 

 Islands are, all of them, basaltic ; some are compact and grayish- 



