HALL ISLAND 1 09 



on our way up and which we now found late in the after- 

 noon of the next day. Our first stop was at Hall Island, 

 which once probably formed a part of St. Matthew, but is 

 now separated from it by only a narrow strait. This was 

 our first visit to uninhabited land, and to a land of such 

 unique grace and beauty that the impression it made can 

 never be forgotten — a thick carpet of moss and many-col- 

 ored flowers covering an open smooth undulating country 

 that faced the sea in dark basaltic cliffs, some of them a 

 thousand feet high. The first thing that attracted our at- 

 tention was the murres — ' arries ' the Aleuts call them — 

 about their rookeries on the 

 cliffs. Their numbers dark- 

 ened the air. As we ap- . 

 proached, the faces of the : 

 rocks seemed paved with ^ 

 them, with a sprinkling of S 

 gulls, puffins, black cormor- rl 

 ants and auklets. On landing "*- 

 at a break in the cliffs where a rookery rock, off hall island, 

 little creek came down to the BERING SEA ' 



sea, our first impulse was to walk along the brink and look 

 down upon the murres and see them swarm out beneath 

 our feet. On the discharge of a gun the air would be black 

 with them, while the cliffs apparently remained as populous 

 as ever. They sat on little shelves or niches with their 

 black backs to the sea, each bird covering one egg with its 

 tail feathers. In places one could have reached down and 

 seized them by the neck, they were so tame and so near the 

 top of the rocks. I believe one of our party did actually 

 thus procure a specimen. It was a strange spectacle 

 and we lingered long looking upon it. To behold sea 

 fowls like flies in uncounted millions, was a new experi- 

 ence. Everywhere in Bering Sea the murres swarm like 

 vermin. It seems as if there was a murre to every square 



