COPPER ISLAND SEAL ROOKERIES. 59 



more appropriately nortbern, side near the northwestern extremity of the island. Its 

 neat, red-painted frame houses and the handsome Greek church nestle cosily at the 

 foot of a steep, high mountain, and it looks as if it might be a sheltered and pleasant 

 place, but as a matter of fact it is not. The peculiar shape of the narrow valley at 

 the mouth of which it is located compresses the winds and sends them howling down 

 or up the cleft, while the precipitous walls, nearly 2,000 feet high on the east and 

 south, shut out what little sunshine the island can boast. 



Here the natives live all the year round, except during the sealing season, when 

 the village is almost deserted. The company has here its stores and dwelling house 

 for the resident agent. The Government has a large building (the ofBce and dwelling 

 of the assistant administrator), a drug store, and a large schoolhouse. The house 

 in which the priest and his family live lies farther off, and is not distinguishable from 

 the larger houses of some of the natives. The new church, which was built in 1895, 

 at a cost of 9,000, is quite an attractive building, though entirely too large for the 

 community. 



The two "summer" villages in which the natives spend the few months of the 

 sealing season are located on the east side, opposite the corresponding rookeries. 

 The first 6ne from the main village is Karabelni, openly situated among the low sand 

 dunes (pi. 34a). All the houses of the natives are small and poorly built huts, many 

 of thein being yurts or mud huts. The salt house and the Government's house are the 

 most imposing structures. Occasionally some of the families stay here until Christ- 

 mas, or even the whole winter, but the Aleuts are too social a people to stand for any 

 length of time such isolation for the sake of thrift or economy. Tlie southern village 

 is Glinka, picturesquely built on the slope of the steep coast escarpment (pis, 346 and 

 35) ; otherwise its general features are like those of Karabelni. 



SEAL ROOKEEIES. 



The character of the Copper Island seal rookeries, owing to the precipitous nature 

 of its coast and the narrowness of its beaches,' is very different from those on Bering 

 Island. There is one quite notable similarity, however, viz, that none are situated on 

 the eastern shore of the islands, in spite of the fact that this side offers plenty of reefy 

 and rocky places which might apparently answer all requirements. There are no 

 records, to my knowledge, which would indicate that seals ever hauled up on the 

 eastern beaches, and there is no reason to believe that they did. 



There are two distinct rookeries on the west side of Copper Island, or, possibly 

 we should say, groups of rookeries. However, while at the present day the various 

 hauling or breeding grounds of each group are distinct and separate enough, they are 

 manifestly only sections of the larger assemblage and are therefore most naturally 

 and conveniently treated as such. These two main rookeries, named Karabelni and 

 Glinka, corresponding to the summer villages of the same name situa^ted opposite, on 

 the east shore, are located in the southeastern half of the island, about 4^ miles apart. 



I So steep are the rooky walls behind the Copper Island rookeries and so close do the seals lie to 

 them that falling masses of earth and rooks have ocoasionally caused the death of many of the animals. 

 Thus it is recorded (Otchet Ross. Amerik. Komp. za 1849, p. 23) that on the 16th of October, 1849, 

 during an earthquake, a rocky wall fell down, burying a rookery on Copper Island. Another 

 earth "slide on one of the Glinka rookeries in 1893 similarly resulted in the killing of many seals. 



