USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 21
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Speaking of the stormy weather brings to my mind the beauti- ful, varied, and impressive nephelogical display in the heavens over- head here during October and November. I may say, without ex- aggeration, that the cloud-effects which I have witnessed from the bluffs of this little island, at this season of the year, surpass any- thing that I had ever seen before. Perhaps the mighty masses of cumuli, deriving their origin from warm exhalations out of the sea, and swelled and whirled with such rapidity, in spite of their appear- ance of solidity, across the horizon, owe their striking brilliancy of color and prismatic tones to that low declination of the sun due to the latitude. Whatever the cause may be, and this is not the place to discuss it, certainly no other spot on earth can boast of a more striking and brilliant cloud-display. In the season of 1865-66, when I was encamped on this same parallel of latitude in the moun- tains eastward of Sitka and the interior, I was particularly attracted by an exceeding brilliancy, persistency, and activity of the aurora ; but here on St. Paul, though I eagerly looked for its dancing light, it seldom appeared ; and when it did it was a sad disappointment, the exhibition always being insignificant as compared in my mind with its flashing of my previous experience. A quaint old writer, a hundred years ago, was describing Norway and its peo-
most prominent feature of the matter. The highest rise in the spring-tides was a trifle over four feet, while that of the neap-tides not much over two. Owing to the nature of the case, it is impossible to prepare a tidal calendar for Alaska, above the Aleutian Islands, which will even faintly foreshadow a cor- rect registration in advance.
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ple : le advanced what he considered a very plausible theory for the cause of the aurora; he cited an ancient sage, who be- lieved that the change of winds threw the saline particles of the sea high into the air, and then by aerial friction, " fermentation " took place, and the light was evolved! I am sure that the saline particles of Bering Sea were whirled into the air during the whole of that winter of my residence there, but no "fermentation " oc- curred, evidently, since rarely indeed did the aurora greet my eyes. In the summer season there is considerable lightning ; you will see it streak its zigzag path mornings, evenings, and even noondays, but from the dark clouds and their swelling masses upon which it is portrayed no sound returns-a fulmen brutum, in fact. I remember hearing but one clap of thunder while in that country. If I recol- lect aright, and my Russian served me well, one of the old natives told me that it was no mystery, this light of the aurora, for, said he, "we all believe that there are fire-mountains away up toward the north, and what we see comes from their burning throats, mirrored back on the heavens."
The formation of these islands, St. Paul and St. George, was recent, geologically speaking, and directly due to volcanic agency, which lifted them abruptly, though gradually, from the sea-bed. Little spouting craters then actively poured out cinders and other volcanic breccia upon the table-bed of basalt, depositing below as well as above the water's level as they rose ; and subsequently fin- ishing their work of construction through the agency of these spout-holes or craters, from which water-puddled ashes and tufa were thrown. Soon after the elevation and deposit of the igneous matter, all active volcanic action must have ceased, though a few half-smothered outbursts seem to have occurred very recently in- deed, for on Bobrovia or Otter Island, six miles southward of St. Paul, is the fresh, clearly blown-out throat, with the fire-scorched and smoked, smooth, sharp-cut, funnel-like walls of a crater. This is the only place on the Seal Islands where there are any evidences of recent discharges from the crater of a volcano.
Since the period of the upheaval of the group under discussion, the sea has done much to modify and even enlarge the most impor- tant one, St. Paul, while the others, St. George and Otter, being lifted abruptly above the power of water and ice to carry and deposit sand, soil, and boulders, are but little changed from the condition of their first appearance.
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The Russians tell a somewhat strange story in connection with Pribylov's landing. They say that both the islands were at first without vegetation, save St. Paul, where there was a small " talneek," or willow, creeping along on the ground ; and that on St. George nothing grew, not even grass, except on the place where the car- casses of dead animals rotted. Then, in the course of time, both islands became covered with grass, a great part of it being of the sedge kind, Elymus. This record of Veniaminov, however, is scarcely credible ; there are few, surely, who will not question the opinion that the seals antedated the vegetation, for, according to his own statements, these creatures were there then in the same im- mense numbers that we find them to-day. The vegetation on these islands, such as it is, is fresh and luxuriant during the growing sea- son of June and July and early August, but the beauty and eco- nomic value of trees and shrubbery, of cereals and vegetables, are denied to them by climatic conditions. Still I am strongly inclined to believe that, should some of those hardy shrubs and spruce trees indigenous at Sitka or Kadiak. be transplanted properly to any of the southern hill-slopes of St. Paul most favored by soil, drainage, and bluffs, for shelter from saline gales, they might grow, though I know that, owing to the lack of sunlight, they would never mature their seed. There is, however, during the summer, a beautiful spread of grasses, of flowering annuals, biennials, and perennials, of gayly-colored lichens and crinkled mosses,* which have always af- forded me great delight whenever I have pressed my way over the moors and up the hillsides of the rookeries.
There are ten or twelve species of grasses of every variety, from close, curly, compact mats to tall stalks-tussocks of the wild wheat, Elymus arenaria, standing in favorable seasons waist high- the " wheat of the north "-together with over one hundred varie- ties of annuals, perennials, sphagnum, cryptogamic plants, etc., all flourishing in their respective positions, and covering nearly every point of rock, tufa, cement, and sand that a plant can grow upon, with a living coat of the greenest of all greens-for there is not sunlight enough there to ripen any perceptible tinge of oclire-yel- low into it-so green that it gives a deep blue tint to gray noonday shadows, contrasting pleasantly with the varying russets, reds,
* The mosses at Kamminista, St. Paul, are the finest examples of their kind on the islands ; they are very perfect, and many species are beautiful.
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THE NORTH SHORE OF SAINT GEORGE
View of the Coast looking East from the North Rookery over to the Village and the Landing
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lemon-yellows, and grays of the lichen-covered rocks, and the brownish-purple of the wild wheat on the sand-dune tracts in autumn, together, also, with innumerable blue, yellow, pink, and white phænogamous blossoms, everywhere interspersed over the grassy uplands and sandy flats. Occasionally, on looking into the thickest masses of verdure, our common wild violet will be found, while the phloxes are especially bright and brilliant here. The flowers of one species of gentian, Gentiana verna are very marked in their beauty ; also those of a nasturtium, and a creeping pea-vine on the sand-dunes. The blossom of a species of the pulse family is the only one here that emits a positive, rich perfume; the others are more suggestive of that quality than expressive. The most striking plant in all of a long list is the Archangelica offici- nalis, with its tall seed-stalks and broad leaves, which grows first in spring and keeps green latest in the fall. The luxuriant rhu- barb-like stems of this umbellifer, after they have made their rapid growth in June, are eagerly sought for by the natives, who pull them and crunch them between their teeth with all the relish that we experience in eating celery. The exhibition of ferns at Kam- minista, St. Paul, during the summer of 1872, surpassed anything that I ever saw : I recall with vivid detail the exceedingly fine dis- play made by these luxuriant and waving fronds, as they reared themselves above the rough interstices of that rocky ridge. From the fern roots, and those of the gentian, the natives here draw their entire stock of vegetable medicines. This floral display on St. Paul is very much more extensive and conspicuous than that on St. George, owing to the absence of any noteworthy extent of warm sand-dune country on the latter island.
When an unusually warm summer passes over the Pribylov group, followed by an open fall and a mild winter, the elymus ripens its seed, and stands like fields of uncut grain in many places along the north shore of St. Paul and around the village, the snow not falling enough to entirely obliterate it ; but it is seldom allowed to flourish to that extent. By the end of August and the first week of September of normal seasons, the small edible berries of Empe- trum nigrum and Rubus chamamorus are ripe. They are found in considerable quantities, especially at "Zapadnie," on both islands, and, as everywhere else throughout circumpolar latitudes, the former is small, watery, and dark, about the size of an English or black currant ; the other resembles an unripe and partially decayed
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raspberry. They are, however, keenly relished by the natives, and even by American residents, being the only fruit growing upon the islands. Perhaps no one plant that flowers on the Seal Islands is more conspicuous and abundant than is the Saxifraga oppositofo- lia ; it grows over all localities, rank and tall in rich locations, to stems scarcely one inch high on the thin, poor soil of hill summits and sides, densely cespitose, with leaves all imbricated in four rows ; and flowers almost sessile. I think that at least ten well-defined species of the order Saxifragacewe exist on the Pribylov group. The Ranunculacece are not so numerous ; but, still, a buttercup grow- ing in every low slope where you may chance to wander is always a pleasant reminder of pastures at home ; and, also, a suggestion of the farm is constantly made by the luxuriant inflorescence of the wild mustard (Cruciferce). The chickweeds (Caryophyllacece) are well represented, and also the familiar yellow dandelion, Taraxacum palustre. Many lichens (Lichenes) and soft mosses (Musci) are in their greatest exuberance, variety, and beauty here ; and myriads of golden poppies (Papaveracece) are nodding their graceful heads in the sweeping of the winds-the first flowers to bloom, and the last to fade.
The chief economic value rendered by the botany of the Pribylov Islands to the natives is an abundance of the basket-making rushes (Juncacece), which the old " barbies" gather in the margins of many of the lakes and pools.
The only suggestion of a tree* found growing on the Pribylov
* That spruce-trees can be made to live transplanted from indigenous lo- calities to the barren slopes of the Aleutian Islands, has been demonstrated ; but in living these trees do nothing else, and scarcely grow to any appreciable degree. A few spruce were transferred to Oonalashka when Veniaminov was at work there in 1830-35. They are still standing and keep green, but the change which such a long lapse of time should produce by growth has been as difficult to determine as it is to find evidence of increased altitude to the mountains around them since these Sitkan trees were planted with pions hope at their feet fifty years ago. Though I can readily understand why the sal- mon-berries of Oonalashka should not do well on the Seal Islands (though I think they would at the Garden Cove of St. George), yet I believe that the huckleberries of that section would thrive at many places if carefully transplanted to these localities : the southern slopes of Cemetery Ridge at Zapadnie ; the southern slopes of Telegraph Hill, and eastern fall of Tolstoi peninsula down to the shore of the lagoon. They might also do well set out at picked places around the Big Lake and on Northeast Point, around the little lake thereon. If these bushes really throve here, they would be the means
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group is the hardy " talneek " or creeping willow ; there are three species of the genus Salir found here, viz., reticulata, polaris, and arctica ; the first named is the most common and of largest growth ; it progresses exactly as a cucumber-vine does in our gardens ; as soon as it has made from the seed a growth of six inches or a foot upright from the soil, then it droops over and crawls along pros- trate upon the earth, rocks, and sphagnum ; some of the largest tal- neek trunks will measure eight or ten feet in decumbent length along the ground, and are as large around the stump as an average wrist of man. The usual size, however, is very, very much less ; while the stems of polaris and arctica scarcely ever reach the diame- ter of a pencil case, or the procumbent length of two feet.
Although Rubus chamcemorus is a tree-shrub, and is found here very commonly distributed, yet it grows such a slender diminutive bush, that it gives no thought whatever of its being anything of the sort. Herbs, grasses, and ferns tower above it on all sides.
The fungoid growths on the Pribylov Islands are abundant and varied, especially in and around the vicinity of the rookeries and the killing-grounds. On the west slope of the Black bluffs at St. Paul the mushroom, Agaricus campestris, was gathered in the sea- son of 1872 by the natives, and eaten by one or two families in the village, who had learned to cook them nicely from the Russians. These Seal Island mushrooms have deeper tones of pink and purple- red in their gills than do those of my gathering in the States. I kicked over many large spherical " puff-balls " (Lycoperde) in my tundra walks ; myriads of smaller ones (Lycoperdon cinereum ?) cover patches near the spots where carcasses have long since rotted, to- gether with a pale gray fungus (Agaricus fimiputris), exceedingly delicate and frosted exquisitely. Some ligneous fungi (Clavaria), will be found attached to the decaying stems of Salix reticulata (creeping willows). The irregularity of the annual growing of the agarics, and their rapid growth when they do appear, makes their
of adding greatly to the comfort of the inhabitants ; for the Oonalashka huckle- berry is an exceeding pleasant, juicy fruit, large and well adapted for canning and preserving. Having less sunshine here than at Illoolook, it may not ripen up as well flavored, but will, I think, succeed. The roots of the bushes when brought up from Oonalashka in April or early May should be kept moist by wet-moss wrappings from the moment they are first taken up until they are reset, with the tops well pruned back, on the Pribylov Islands. The experi- ment is surely worth all the trouble of making, and I hope it will be done. .
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determination excessively difficult ; they are as unstable in their visits as are several of the Lepidoptera. The cool humidity of cli- mate during the summer season on the Pribylov Islands is espe- cially adapted to that mysterious, but beautiful growth of these plants-the apotheosis of decay. The coloring of several varieties is very bright and attractive, shading from a purplish-scarlet to a pallid white.
A great many attempts have been made, both here and at St. George, to raise a few of the hardy vegetables. With the excep- tion of growing lettuce, turnips, and radishes on the Island of St. Paul, nothing has been or can be done. On the south shore of St. George, and at the foot of a mural bluff, is a little patch of ground less in area than one-sixteenth of an acre, which appears to be so drained and so warmed by the rarely-reflected sunlight from this cliff, every ray of which seems to be gathered and radiated from the rocks, as to allow the production of fair turnips ; and at one season there were actually raised potatoes as large as walnuts. Gardening, however, on either island involves so much labor and so much care, with so poor a return, that it has been discontinued. It is a great deal better, and a great deal easier, to have the " truck" come up once a year from San Francisco on the steamer.
There is one comfort which nature has vouchsafed to civilized man on these islands. There are very few indigenous insects. A large flesh-fly, Bombylius major, appears during the summer and settles in a striking manner on the backs of quiet, loafing natives, or strings itself in rows of millions upon the long grass-blades which flourish about the killing-grounds, especially on the leaf-stalks of an elymus, causing this vegetation, over the whole slaughtering- field and vicinity, to fairly droop to earth as if beaten down by a tornado of wind and rain. It makes the landscape look as though it had moulded over night, and the fungoid spores were blue and gray. Our common house-fly is not present ; I never saw one while I was up there. The flesh-flies which I have just mentioned never came into the dwellings unless by accident : the natives say they do not annoy them, and I did not notice any disturbance among the few animals which the resident company had imported for beef and for service.
Then, again, this is perhaps the only place in all Alaska where man, primitive and civilized, is not cursed by mosquitoes. There are none here. A gnat, that is disagreeably suggestive of the real
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enemy just referred to, flits about in large swarms, but it is inoffen- sive, and seeks shelter in the grass. Several species of beetles are also numerous here. One of them, the famous green and gold " carabus," is exceedingly common, crawling everywhere, and is just as bright in the rich bronzing of its wing-shields as are its famous prototypes of Brazil. One or two species of Itemosa, a Cymindis, several representatives of the Aphidiphaga, one or two of Dytiscidc, three or four Cicindelide-these are nearly all that I found. A single dragon-fly, Perla bicaudata, flitted over the lakes and ponds of St. Paul. The familiar form to our eyes, of the bum- ble-bee, Bombus borealis, passing from flower to flower, was rarely seen ; but a few are here resident. The Hydrocorisce occur in great abundance, skipping over the water in the lakes and pools every- where, and a very few species of butterflies, principally the yellow Nymphalidc, are represented by numerous individuals.
Aside from the seal-life on the Pribylov Islands, there is no in- digenons mammalian creature, with the exception of the blue and white foxes, Vulpes lagopus,* and a lemming, Myodes obensis. The latter is restricted, for some reason or other, to the Island of St. George, where it is, or at least was, in 1874, very abundant. Its
* Blue foxes were also, and are, natives of the Commander Islands. Stel- ler describes their fearlessness when the shipwrecked crew of the St. Peter landed there, November 6, 1741.
In regard to these foxes the Pribylov natives declare that when the islands were first occupied by their ancestors, 1786-87, the fur was invariably blue ; that the present smoky blue, or ashy indigo color, is due to the coming of white foxes across on the ice from the mainland to the eastward. The white- furred vulpes is quite numerous on the islands to-day. I should judge that perhaps one-fifth of the whole unmber were of this color; they do not live apart from the blue ones, but evidently breed "in and in." I notice that Veniaminov, also, makes substantially the same statement ; only differing by charging this deterioration of the blue foxes' fur to a deportation from out- side of red foxes, on ice-floes, and adds that the natives always hunted down these " krassnie peeschee " as soon as their presence was known ; hence my inability, perhaps, to see any sign of their posterity in 1872-76.
The presence of these animals on the Pribylov Islands is a real source of happiness to the natives, especially so to the younger ones. The little pup- foxes make pets and playfellows for the children, while hunting the adults during the winter gives wholesome employment to the mind and body of the native who does so. They are trapped in common dead-falls, steel spring- clips, or beaver traps, and shot. A very large portion of the gossip on the islands is in relation to this business.
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burrows and paths, under and among the grassy hummocks and mossy flats, checkered every square rod of land there covered with this vegetation. Although the Island of St. Paul is but twenty-nine or thirty miles to the northwest, not a single one of these active, curious little animals is found there, nor could I learn from the natives that it had ever been seen there. The foxes are also re- stricted to these islands ; that is, their kind, which are not found elsewhere, except the stray examples on St. Matthew seen by my- self, and those which are carefully domesticated and preserved at Attoo, the extreme westernmost land of the Aleutian chain. These animals find comfortable holes for their accommodation and retreat on the Seal Islands, among the countless chinks and crevices of the basaltic formation. They feed and grow fat upon sick and weakly seals, also devouring many of the pups, and they vary this diet by water-fowl and eggs* during the summer, returning for their sub- sistence during the long winter to the bodies of seals upon the breeding-grounds and the skinned carcasses left upon the killing- fields. Were they not regularly hunted from December until April, when their fur is in its prime beauty and condition, they would swarm like the lemming on St. George, and perhaps would soon be obliged to eat one another. The natives, however, thin them out by incessant trapping and shooting during the period when the seals are away from the islands.
The Pribylov group is as yet free from rats ; at least none have
* The temerity of the fox is wonderful to contemplate, as it goes on a full run or stealthy tread up and down and along the faces of almost inaccessible bluffs, in search of old and young birds and their nests and eggs, for which the "peeschee " have a keen relish. The fox always brings an egg up in its mouth, and, carrying it back a few feet from the brink of the precipice, lei- surely and with gusto breaks the larger end and sucks the contents from the shell. One of the curious sights of my notice, in this connection, was the sly, artful, and insidious advances of Reynard at Tolstoi Mees, St. George, where, conspicuons and elegant in its fluffy white dress, it cunningly stretched on its back as though dead, making no sign of life whatever, save to gently hoist its thick brush now and then ; whereupon many dull, curious sea-birds, Graculus bicristatus, in their intense desire to know all about it, flew in narrowing cir- cles overhead, lower and lower, closer and closer, until one of them came within the sure reach of a sudden spring and a pair of quick snapping jaws, while the gulls and others, rising safe and high above, screamed out in seem- ing contempt for the struggles of the unhappy " shag," and rendered hideous approbation.
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got off from the ships. There is no harbor on either of these islands, and vessels lie out in the roadstead, so far from land that those pests do not venture to swim to the shore. Mice were long ago brought to shore in ships' cargoes, and they are a great nui- sance to the white people as well as the natives throughout the islands. Hence cats also are abundant. Nowhere, perhaps, in the wide world are such cats to be seen as these. The tabby of our acquaintance, when she goes up there and lives upon the seal-meat spread everywhere under her nose, is metamorphosed, by time of the second generation, into a stubby feline ball. In other words, she becomes thickened, short, and loses part of the normal lengthi of her tail ; also her voice is prolonged and resonant far beyond the misery which she inflicts upon our ears here. These cats actually swarm about the natives' houses, never in them much, for only a tithe of their whole number can be made pets of ; but they do make night hideous beyond all description. They repair for shelter often to the chinks of precipices and bluffs ; but although not exactly wild, yet they cannot be approached or cajoled. The natives, when their sluggish wits are periodically aroused and thoroughly dis- turbed by the volume of cat-calls in their village, sally out and by a vigorous effort abate the nuisance for the time being. Only the most fiendish caterwauling will or can arouse this Aleutian ire.
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