HISTORY OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLES, OR ALEUTIA. 197 



bow persistently continuous in its course, to have so completely obliterated the 

 numerous and extended populations of the Mound Builders, possessed as they 

 were of the defences and weapons of a high civilization. The great nomadic 

 incursions recorded in history, like that of Genghis Khan into Europe, become 

 inconsequential in the comparison. 



If such things did occur it must have been at an epoch long anterior to the 

 present condition of the "far northwest." Earthquake and cataclysm, the 

 battles of fires and waters must have created greater disturbance with far more 

 destructive and radical invasions than any j.. human agency could have accom- 

 plished. The present state of the physical geography of this "far northwest" 

 utterly precludes the possibility of any such invasions, fulfilled by barbaric hordes. 

 Neither time nor circumstance could accomplish under such physical conditions 

 so gigantic a work and have left not even a mound or a mile-stone to mark its 

 route. 



There must have been upheavals of volcanic peaks with their boiling lava 

 chimneys forming mountains merged in the waters with only their summits visible 

 above the ocean, like the island of the " Four Craters," and again a subsidence 

 of territory from the caving in of the vast subterranean cavities emptied of their 

 seething contents. With all this must have occurred an inundation of waters, in 

 which great cataclysm the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans blended, the 

 grand Gulf stream of the former passing through the Arctic Sea by the Straits 

 of Behring with the equally grand Pacific Black Stream, or Kuro Shiwo. Before 

 this epoch the ancestors of the Esquimaux in America and the Koriaks, the 

 Chukches, or Tungusian Tartars of Asia may have traded, and dwelt in their 

 igloos together.* 



Let all this be as it may, at the time that the Russians discovered these is- 

 lands, the natives of the different groups spoke different languages, and, hence 

 we may infer that the inhabitants of the various groups were the remains of mi- 

 grations from both America on their east and Asia at their west, as they again 

 coalesced, and were regenerated from the lapse of time. 



Some question has been made of the derivation of the name Aleut, and 

 even suggested that it was a term of contempt of the Russian explorers and fur 

 hunters for the islanders, (see Dall's Report page — ,) but we find in the work of 

 Wm. Coxe, A. M., London, 1780, Russian Discoveries Between Asia and Amer- 

 ica, published just 100 years ago, that the wbrd Aleut is Russian, meaning "a; 

 bold rocky Such is the distinctive character of all the islands, and, hence seems 

 peculiarly adapted as their title. 



* The pent-up waters of the Arctic Ocean burst through the Behring Strait and overwhelmed the ruins 

 left from volcanic fires— as the waters of the Nevadas by a thousand floods at some epoch tore through the 

 Golden Gate. As a further illustration of this subsidence and upheaval it is recognized that the waters of the 

 Arctic Ocean once penetrated the American continent as far — if not still further — as Great Slave, and Atha- 

 basca Lakes, and that that long chain of lakes in the interior of the continent are only the vestiges of the de- 

 parture of the greater sea. In the same manner as it is conceded that Siberia was once covered by the Arctic 

 waters, the remains of which are the Lake Baikal and the Caspian Sea, while such great rivers as the Lena, 

 Yenessei and Anadyr now drain the mountain lines back to the retreated ocean. 



