THE SHUMAGIN GROUP 87 



them invaded by a great glacier that swept down from 

 the snow-white peaks beyond. The spectacle was so 

 unexpected and so tremendous that it fairly took their 

 breaths away. From the deck of the ship the slope up 

 which their course lay looked like a piece of stretched 

 green baize cloth. 



An event of this day's cruising which I must not forget 

 was the strange effects wrought for us by that magician 

 Mirage: islands and headlands in the air, long low capes 

 doubled, one above another, with a lucid space between 

 them; a level snowy range standing up slightly above a 

 nearer rocky one, drawn out and manipulated till it sug- 

 gested a vast Grecian temple crowning a rocky escarp- 

 ment — fantasy, illusion, enchantment-trick played with 

 sea and shore on every hand that afternoon. 



From this point we turned to the island again and in 

 the middle of the night gathered in the bear hunters we 

 had left at Uyak Bay. They were bearless, but they had 

 the comfort of having seen many signs of bears, and of 

 having had many enjoyable tramps over hill and across 

 dale in a green treeless country, of having found a superb 

 waterfall, and of having survived the hordes of mos- 

 quitoes. 



We steamed all day southwestward along the Alaska 

 Peninsula, under clear skies and over smooth waters, 

 past the Semides and bound for the Shumagin Islands, 

 where we dropped anchor about midnight. 



When we put our heads out of our windows on the 

 morning of the 7th we were at anchor off Sand Point, a 

 bay in Popof Island, one of the Shumagin group, about 

 half way down the Alaska Peninsula. On the one hand 

 we saw a low green treeless slope, almost within a stone's 

 throw, from which came many musical bird voices — the 

 lesser hermit thrush, the golden-crowned sparrow, the 

 fox sparrow, the large song sparrow, the yellow warbler, 



