BELKOFSKI 89 



lines of snow. Their walls were so steep that no snow 

 lay upon them, while the pinnacles were like church 

 spires. 



The whole of the Alaska Peninsula, and all the islands 

 off it, and the islands in Bering Sea and the Aleutian 

 group, are of volcanic origin, and some of the embers of 

 the old fires are still alive in our day, as we had proof. 

 Since our visit there has been other proof in the shape of 

 a severe earthquake shock felt all along the Alaska coast, 

 in some places disastrously. 



Continuing to the westward we sailed along verdant 

 shores and mountains without sign of human habitation 

 till we saw a cluster of buildings called Belkofski — two 

 or three dozen brown roofs grouped around a large 

 white, green-topped building, probably a Greek church. 

 The settlement seemed carefully set down there in the 

 green solitude like a toy village on a shelf. The turf had 

 not been anywhere broken; not a mark or stain upon the 

 treeless landscape. Above it ran a high smooth barren 

 mountain which swept down in green slopes to a broad 

 emerald plain upon which the hamlet sat. Now a long 

 headland comes down to the water's edge with its green 

 carpet; then again it is cut off sharply by the sea, or cut 

 in twain, showing sheer pyramidal walls 200 feet high. 

 Then a succession of vast, smooth emerald slopes run- 

 ning up into high gray barren mountains, pointed, conical, 

 curved; now presenting a mighty bowl, fluted and scal- 

 loped and opening on one side through a sweep of valley 

 to the sea, then a creased and wrinkled lawn at an angle 

 of 45 and miles in extent. The motionless ice sheets 

 we had seen farther north flowing down out of the moun- 

 tains, were here simulated by grassy billows flowing down 

 out of the hills. Green, white, and blue are the three 

 prevailing tints all the way from Cook Inlet to Unalaska 

 — blue of the sea and sky, green of the shores and lower 



