HALL AND ST. MATTHEW ISLANDS III 



of grays, drabs, browns, greens and all delicate neutral 

 tints, all dashed with masses of many-colored flowers, it 

 had never before been my fortune to witness, much less to 

 walk upon. Drifting over this marvelous carpet or drop- 

 ping down upon it from the air above was the hyperborean 

 snowbird, white as a snowflake and with a song of great 

 sweetness and power. With lifted wings the bird would 

 drop through the air to the earth pouring out its joyous 

 ecstatic strain. Out of the deep twilight came also the 

 song of the longspur, delivered on the wing and touching 

 the wild solitude like the voices of children at play. Then 

 there was the large Aleutian sandpiper that ran before 

 me and uttered its curious wild plaint. The robber jaeger 

 was there too — a very beautiful bird, a sort of cross be- 

 tween a hawk and a gull — sitting quietly upon the moss 

 and eyeing our movements. On the top of the grassy 

 bank near the sea some of the party found the nest and 

 young of the snowy owl. Fragments of the bodies of 

 murres and ducks lay upon the ground beside it. 



The most novel and striking of the wild flowers was a 

 species of large white claytonia growing in rings the size 

 of a tea plate, floral rings dropped here and there upon 

 the carpet of moss. In the center was a rosette of pointed 

 green leaves pressed close to the ground; around this 

 grew the ring of flowers made up of thirty or forty individ- 

 uals all springing from the same root, their faces turned 

 out in all directions from the parent center. In places they 

 were so near together one could easily step from one circle 

 to another. 



The forenoon of the next day, the 15th, we spent upon 

 St. Matthew, and repeated our experience of walking over 

 ground covered with nature's matchless tapestry. Here, 

 too, a thick heavy carpet of variegated mosses and lich- 

 ens had been stretched to the very edge of the cliffs, with 

 rugs and mats of many colored flowers — pink, yellow, 



