18 THE FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



was hidden from my view. Add to tbis impression tlie stuimiug wliir of huudreds of thousands of strong, beating 

 wings, the shrill screams of the gulls, and the miifaed croaking of the "aries", coupled with an indescribable, 

 disagreeable smell which arose from the brokeu eggs and other decaying substances, and a faint idea may be 

 evoked of the strange reality spread before me. Were it not for this island and the ease with which the natives 

 can gather, in a few hours, tons upon tons of sea-fowl eggs, the people of the village would be obliged to go to the 

 westward, and suspend themselves from the lofty cliffs of Einahuuhto, dangling over the sea by ropes, as their 

 neighbors are only too glad and willing to do at St. George. 



St. Paul.— A glance at the map of St. Paul, shows that nearly half of its superficial area is low and quite flat, 

 not much elevated above the sea. Wherever the sand-dune tracts are located, and that is right along the coast, is 

 found an irregular succession of hummocks and hillocks, drifted by the wind, which are very characteristic. On the 

 summits of these hillocks the Ehjmun has taken root in times past, and, as the sand drifts up, it keeps growing on and 

 up so that the quaint spectacle is presented of large stretches to the view, wherein sand-dunes, entirely bare of all 

 vegetation at their base and on their sides, are crowned with a living cap of the brightest green — a tuft of long, 

 waving grass blades which will not down. None of this peculiar laudscai)ing, however, is seen on St. George, not 

 even in the faintest degree. Travel about St. Paul, with the exception of the road to Northeast point, where the 

 natives take advantage of low water to run on the hard, wet sand, is exceedingly difficult, and there are examples 

 of only a few white men who have ever taken the trouble and expended the physical energy necessary to accomplish 

 the comparatively short walk from the village to Nahsay veruia, or the north shore. Walking over the moss-hidden 

 and slippery rocks, or tumbling over slightly uncertain tussocks, is a task and not a pleasure. On St. George, 

 with the exception of a half-mile path to the village cemetery and back, nobody pretends to walk, except the natives 

 who go to and from the rookeries in their regular seal-drives. Indeed, 1 am told that I am the only white man 

 who has ever traversed the entire coast-liue of both islands. (See note, u9, E.) 



St. George.— Turning to St. George and its profile, presented by the accompanying map, the observer will be 

 struck at once by the solidity of that little island and its great boldness, rising, as it does, sheer and precipitous 

 Irom the sea all around, except at the three short reaches of the coast indicated on Ih^ chart, and where the only 

 chance to come ashore exists. . 



The seals naturally have no such opportunity to gain a footing here as they have on St. Paul, hence their 

 comparative insignificance as to number. The island itself is a trifle over ten miles in extreme length, east and west, 

 and about four and a quarter miles in greatest width, north and south. It looks, when plotted, somewhat like an 

 old stone ax; and, indeed, when I had finished my first contours from my field-notes, the ancient stone-ax outline 

 so disturbed me that I felt obliged to resurvey the southern shore, in order that I might satisfy my own mind as to 

 the accuracy of my first work. It consists of two great plateaus, with a high upland valley between, the western 

 table land dropping abruptly to the sea at Dalnoi Mees, while the eastern falls as precipitately at Waterfall Head and 

 Tolstoi Mees. There are several little reservoirs of fresh water— I can scarcely call them lakes — on this jsland ; 

 pools, rather, that the wet sphagnum seems to always keep full, and from which drinking-water in abundance is 

 everywhere found. At Garden cove a small stream, the only one on the Pribylov group, empties into the sea. 



St. George has an area of about 137 square miles ; it has 29 miles of coast-line, of which only two and a quarter 

 are visited by the fur-seals, and whi(;h is in fiict all the eligible landing-ground afforded them by the structure of 

 the island. Nearly half of the shore of St. Paul is a sandy beach, while on St. George there is less than a mile of 

 it all put together, namely, a few hundred yards in front of the vil age, the same extent on the 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 tutli intercalated, rises abruptly from the sea to a sheer height of 920 feet 

 at its reach of greatest elevation, thence, dropping a little, runs clear around the island to Zapadnie, a distance of 

 nearly 10 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 the extended 

 area of lava-shingled inland ridges and terraces, millions upon millions of water-fowl breed during tbe summer 



months. 



The general altitude of St. George, though in itself not great, has, however, an average three times higlicr 

 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 lauding. The loftiest summit on St. George, the top of 1 he hill 

 right back to the southward of the village, is 930 feet, and is called by the natives Ahlnckeyak. That on St. Paul, as 

 I have before said, is Boga Slov hill, 000 feet. All elevations on either island, 15 or 20 feet above sea-level, are rough 

 and hummocky, with the exception of the 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 abundant on the summit slopes of Ahlnckeyak hill, St. George. Specimens from the stratified bands of 

 old, friable, gray lavas, so conspicuous on the shore of this latter island, show the existence of hornblende and 

 vitreous feldspar in considerable quantity, while on the south shore, near the Garden cove, is a large dike of a bhiish 

 and greenish gray phonolith, in which numerous small crystals 'of spinel are found. A dike, with well-defined 



