88 JOHN BURROUGHS 



the rosy finch — all were distinguishable from the ship's 

 deck. It is a novel experience to wake up in the morning 

 on an ocean steamer and hear bird songs through your 

 open window. But this was often our experience on this 

 trip. On this grassy hill were some curious volcanic 

 warts or excrescences that gave a strange effect to the 

 scene. On the other hand, the blue waters of the harbor 

 stretched away to low alder-clad shores from which rose 

 a range of bare volcanic mountains, among them one 

 perfect cone, probably 3,000 feet high. 



In the Shumagins three men elected to leave the ship 

 to dredge the sea and study the volcanic formation of the 

 land. We promised to pick them up on our return ten 

 days hence. At 10 o'clock our anchor was up and we 

 were off for Unalaska. The event of this day was the 

 view we had of the twin volcanic peaks of Pavlof, rising 

 from the shore to an altitude of 7,000 or 8,000 feet. One 

 of them was a symmetrical cone with black converging 

 lines of rock cutting through the snow like the ribs of an 

 umbrella; the other was more rugged and irregular, with 

 many rents upon its sides and near its summit, from which 

 issued vapor, staining the snow like smoke from a chim- 

 ney. Sheets of vapor were also seen issuing from cracks 

 at its foot near the sea level. We were specially fortu- 

 nate in seeing these grand mountains under such favorable 

 weather conditions. 



On this day also, just after passing Pavlof, we were for 

 hours in sight of the Aghileen Pinnacles, which have such 

 a strange architectural effect amid the wilder and ruder 

 forms that surround them, as if some vast many-spired 

 cathedral of dark gray stone were going to decay there 

 in the mountain solitude. Both in form and color they 

 seemed alien to everything about them. Now we saw 

 them athwart the crests of smooth green hills, then rising 

 behind naked rocky ridges, or fretting the sky above 



