May 5, igoo.J 
f^ORESt AND STREAIvi. 
The Harriman Alaska Expedition. 
K.— To Bogoslof and the Prifailofs^ 
After the big-game hunters were picked up in. U3'-ak 
Bay, the nose of the steamer was turned westward, and 
all day long she sailed through the clear waters south of 
Alaska Peninsula. The sky was cloudless and blue as 
blue could be, and the water was only a little darker. 
On the shore of the mainland great, stern cliffs rose 
sharply from the water to ragged peaks, and beyond 
these w^re higher snow-covered mountains, with wide 
snow fields and mighty glaciers. Several of the higher 
mountains were smoking volcanoes, and of these one of 
the most striking~is Mt. Olai. Some of these volcano'es 
is a high totiCj with rare rock ribs showing above the 
snow from summit to base. To the southwest of this 
cone, and connected with it by a long, low saddle, is an- 
other mountain, higher and irregular in shape, showing 
frequent heavy masses of rock. On this mountain the 
snow on top and on its upper sides is grimy, as if smoked 
or strewn with cinders, and a little pillar of smoke rises 
from the summit and drifts of? on the breeze. Just before 
coming up with the snow cone the great Pavlof Bay is 
passed, extending far into the peninsula, and almost cut- 
ting it in two. Over the mountains to the west hung 
heavj' clouds, hinting of the fogs of Bering Sea. 
The morning and the early afternoon were perfect, 
sunny and cloudless, but at 5 o'clock the sky became 
gray and dull. Ever since the day Orca was left, the 
skies had been continuously clear. Weather such as 
Rock was passed, a huge pillar rising from the water's 
edge, under the high bluff of which it was once a part. 
From certain points this pillar looks not unlike a priest 
in his robe standing there. As we passed along we saw 
the two important volcanoes of Makushin and Akutan. 
As the ship passed out into the Bering Sea, the weather 
grew more and more thick, and after a time fog and 
rain set in, making the evening gloomy. Just before 
dinner the two islands of Bogoslof came in sight, but 
so shrouded in fog that they were seen only dimly. As 
the ship approached them the air was full of murres, 
flying about in flocks. Often they seemed to come directly 
from the islands, flying straight toward the ship, passing 
it, and then turning and flying back toward and almost 
over it. They never quite passed over the decks, seeming 
to fear to do this, though often they crossed the bows, 
Photo by E. S. Curtis. 
PARLOF MOUNTAINS. ALASKA PENINSULAR. 
Copyright, 1899, by E. H. Harriman. 
worked intermittently, sending up a column of steam or 
smoke, which would then disappear, to be followed a 
little later by another jet, and this again to be succeeded 
by a period of clearing. Two or three volcanoes seen 
later in the day gave forth clouds of dark smoke, which 
hung about the peaks, forming the only breaks in the 
sky, except the heavj^ smoke of the steamship, which 
hung low over the water behind us. Many of these vol- 
canoes are unnamed. 
In these waters life, so far as- we could see, was not: 
very abundant. There were a few gulls, guillemots, 
puffins, and once in a while a seal. On one occaion 
a sea otter was thought to have been seen, but this was 
not certain. It is true that the ship was twelve or fifteen 
miles from the land, and therefore rather beyond the 
range of flight of most of the birds. The weather was 
beautiful, warm and windless, and there was no motion 
to the ship except the slow, long swell of the Pacific. 
this is very unusual here, and Capt. Humphrey, who had 
spent many years in Alaska, and had traveled all over 
these waters, had never before seen the Pavlof Moun- 
lains. A member of the party who had been visiting these 
seas for thirty years declared that th.e weather was un- 
exampled. ■ 
After dinner that evening there appeared above the 
clouds on Unimak Island the tip of a mountain peak, 
and gradually more and more of it showed, imtil perhaps 
the upper third of a perfectly smooth, wide-based cone ap- 
peared, shaped exactly like the conical mountain of the 
Pavlof group; but this one was black in color, and ap- 
parently without snow. Its shape was perfect and sym- 
metrical, and the two long, pale horizontal clouds which 
lay across the visible part of it set it off beautifully. This 
is Mt. Shishaldin; it is usuall}' snow-covered. 
A little later another rough and high mountain showed 
through the clouds. It is more or less square at the top. 
sometimes within a very few feet. If a bird got started in 
a course which promised to carry it over the ship and 
came close to the vessel without noticing it, it seemed to 
become frightened, and made great efforts to change its 
course. It would spread its tail, throw out its feet and 
turn sharply either up, down or to one side, sometimes 
uttering a little squeaking cry of alarm. The birds flew 
swiftly, and were at home on the wing. As the ship drew 
near the islands hundreds of sea lions resting on the 
shore could be seen through the glasses, and hovering 
about either end of each island were swarms of small 
objects darting through the air, which were the birds 
flj'ing to and fro from the cliffs. The murres breed here 
literally by millions, and at a distance they look pre- 
ciselj' like a swarm of bees about a hive. 
A small party landed here in the rain. They found 
hundreds of sea lions on the shore and millions of 
murres in the air. The sea lions were ferocious in ap- 
Photo by E. S. Curtis. 
BOGOSLOF ISLAND, FOG-OBSCURED. 
Copyright, 1899, by E. H. Harriman. 
About the middle of the night the ship anchored off 
Unga, one of the Shumagin Islands, which are named 
after a sailor of Bering's crew who died and was buried 
on one of the islands. It was purposed to leave a 
party here, and several of the big-game hunters were 
asked whether they would prefer to stop here to hunt 
on the mainland till the ship returned from Bering Sea 
or to go on with the ship. But, however anxious to kill 
^me the hunters were, they were still more anxious to 
see the sights of that Northern, sea, and all of them stuck 
by the ship. 
At Popop Island a party stopped to make collections, 
remaining there until the ship should return. They kept 
with them one of the steam launches and a skiff, and 
expected to be called for in about ten days. It was 
thought that on the mainland some specimens of large 
game might be collected; perhaps some bears, and prob- 
ably some sheep, with a possibility of caribou. 
After leaving Unga for Unalaska, the ship steamed west 
through Unga Straits, .with low, bluffy shores on either 
hand and higher mountains rising behind them. Im- 
mediately before the ship rose a perfectly smooth snow- 
covered cone. With a very broad base, which is one of the 
Pavlof group of mountains, and as it %yas ' approached it 
grew more and more wonderful in its regular beauty. It 
broken off and rough here and there, and has a large 
glacier running down its western side; this is Mt. Is- 
anotski, which in the latter part of the last century blew 
its head off in a volcanic outburst, which caused a great 
tidal wave and much loss of life in the vicinity. Still 
further to the westward, and showing dimly through the 
clouds as night fell, appeared Mt. Pogrumnoi, snow-clad 
and sharp. The scenery of that day was surpassingly 
beautiful and will always remain in the minds of those 
who saw it. 
During the night the ship reached Dutch Harbor, 
and the morning was spent at the stores of the two great 
commercial companies at Udakta and Unalaska. No 
one visits Unalaska without recalling Campbell's match- 
less but misapplied line, "The wolf's long howl on Un- 
alaska's shore." Here there were to be seen furs of many 
sorts — polar bear skins from the arctic; coats, shirts 
and jackets, made from the hides of tame reindeer of 
Siberia, and from the skins of arctic ground squirrel; 
fox skins from the arctic, and from the interior; walrus 
tusks from the north; baskets woven by the natives of 
Akta, Attn, Port Clarence and Point Barrow. Some 
of the fur garments were very beautiful. 
The wharf at Dutch Harbor was left not long after 
noon, and the vessel steamed away for the north. Priest 
pearance. but many of them took to the sea at once, 
leaving the beach before the boat landed. Others fled 
to a little lagoon which lay between the beach and the 
mountain, and the waters of this pond were lashed to 
foam by the struggles of the frightened animals. • The 
sailors caught two pups, which were brought on board 
ship. On landing, one of the party fired a shot at the 
murres, and the birds left the rocks in a dense crowd 
and swept down over the party in an absolutely black 
mass, which hid the sky; and yet after these birds had 
flown away there seemed left on the rocks and hovering 
about the cliffs just as many as ever. As the birds left 
the ledges they pushed down thousands of eggs from 
their insecure resting places. 
The Bogoslof Islands are new. One of them was 
pushed up in a volcanic eruption about a hundred years 
ago, and the other made its appearance in 1883, and 
thus only about seventeen years old. They are really two 
peaks of a submarine mountain, and seem to be coii^ 
nected by a wide saddle, for the surf breaks for a long 
distance out from each toward the other, there being 
only a very narrow space between them — perhaps an- 
swering to the lowest part of the saddle — where the surf 
does not break. 
Leaving Bogoslof with its fogs, its herd of roaring 
