USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 24
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during my four seasons of inspection, they never have got much, under the best of circumstances, on either island. They pay little attention to it now, and gather what they do during the winter season, going to Polavina and the north shore with sleds, on which they hoist sails after loading there, and scud home before strong northerly blasts.
Captain Erskine informs me that the water is free and bold all around the north shore, from Cross Hill to Southwest Point ; no reefs or shoals up to with- in half a mile of land anywhere. English Bay is very shallow, and no sea- going vessel should attempt to enter it that draws over six feet.
Dalnoi Mees
"Starry Ateel"
8
"North"
£ 10
5 . "Little Eastern
920 ft.
6
4
"Great Eastern"
Village
PLATEAU $50 ft.
Tolstoi Mees
GULL HILL
150
AHLUCHEYAK HILL
75
Sea Lions
MAP OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND-PRIBYLOV GROUP.
Showing the Area and Position of the Fur Seal Rookeries and Hauling Grounds. Surveyed and drawn (1873-74) by HENRY W. ELLIOTT.
Zapadnie
Garden Cove 1, 10
Zapadnie "
600
10
Hauling Grounds.
SOU
HIGH PLATEAU
True N.
Var. 2 2° 27' 40"E:
Breeding do
Waterfall Head
1
2
3
Scale : Statute Miles
ST. GEORGE'S ISLAND, PRIBYLOV GROUP
Viewed from a point at sea about 7 miles E. N. E., off Tolstoi Mees : these characteristic swarms of waterfowl, arries and choochkies, stirred up by an approach of the steamer, encircle the whole island in this manner, and give notice to a mariner, in thick weather, of the proximity of that island long before it can be seen
227
WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
Garden Cove beach, southeast side, and less than half a mile at Zapadnie on the south side.
Just above the Garden Cove, under the overhanging bluffs, several thousand sea-lions hold exclusive, though shy, possession. Here there is a half-mile of good landing. On the north shore of the island, three miles west from the village, a grand bluff wall of basalt and tufa intercalated rises abruptly from the sea to a sheer height of nine hundred and twenty feet at its reach of greatest elevation : thence, dropping a little, runs clear around the island to Zapadnie, a distance of nearly ten miles, without affording a single passage-way up or down to the sea that thunders at its base. Upon its innumerable narrow shelf-margins, and in its countless chinks and crannies, and back therefrom over an extended area of lava- shingled inland ridges and terraces, millions upon millions of water- fowl breed during the summer months.
The general altitude of St. George, though in itself not great, las, however, an average three times higher than that of St. Paul, the elevation of which is quite low, and slopes gently down to the sea east and north; St. George rises abruptly, with exceptional spots for landing. The loftiest summit on St. George, the top of the hill right back to the southward of the village, is nine hundred and thirty feet, and is called by the natives Ahluckeyak. That on St. Paul, as I have before said, is Bogaslov Hill, six hundred feet. All elevations on either island, fifteen or twenty feet above sea-level, are rough and hummocky, with the exception of those sand-dune tracts at St. Paul and the summits of the cinder hills, on both islands. Weathered out, or washed from the basalt and pockets of olivine on either island, are aggregates of augite, seen most abun- dant on the summit slopes of Ahluckeyak Hill, St. George. Speci- mens from stratified bands of old, friable, gray lavas, so conspic- uous on the shore of this latter island, show an existence of horn- blende and vitreous felspar in considerable quantity, while on the south shore, near Garden Cove, is a large dike of a bluish and greenish gray phonolite, in which numerous small crystals of spinel are found. A dike, with well-defined walls, of old close- grained, clay-colored lava, is near the village of St. George, about a quarter of a mile east from the landing, in the face of those red- dish breccia bluffs that rise from the sea. It is the only example of the kind on the islands. The bases or foundations of the Pribylov Islands are, all of them, basaltic ; some are compact and grayish-
228
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
white, but most of them exceedingly porous and ferruginous .* Upon this solid floor are many hills of brown and red tufa, cinder- heaps, etc. Polavina Sopka, the second point in elevation on St. Paul Island, is almost entirely built up of red scoria and breccia ; so is Ahluckeyak Hill, on St. George, and the cap to the high bluffs opposite. The village hill at St. Paul, Cone hill, the Einahnuhto peaks, Crater Hill, North Hill, and Little Polavina are all ash-heaps of this character. The bluffs at the shore of Polavina Point, St. Paul, show in a striking manner a section of the geological struct- ure of the island. The tufas on both islands, at the surface, de- compose and weather into the base of good soil, which the severe climate, however, renders useless to good husbandmen. There is not a trace of granitic or of gneissoid rocks found in situ. Meta- morphic boulders have been collected along the beaches and pushed up by heavy ice-floes which have brought them down from
* The profile of the coast of St. George's Island, which I give on the map, presents clearly an idea of its characteristic, bold, abrupt elevation from the sea. From the Garden Cove around to Zapadnie beach there is no natural opportunity for a man to land ; then, again, from Zapadnie beach round to Starry Arteel there is not a sign of a chance for an agile man to come ashore and reach the plateau above. From Starry Arteel to the Great Eastern rookery there is an alternation, between the several breeding-grounds, of three low and gradual slopes of the land to sea-level ; these, with the landing at Garden Cove and at Zapadnie, are the only spots of the St. George coast where we can come ashore. An active person can scramble up at several steep places be- tween the Sea Lion rookery and Tolstoi Mees, but the rest of that extended bluffy sea-wall, which I have just defined, is wholly inaccessible from the water. A narrow strip of rough, rocky shingle, washed over by every storm- beaten sea, is all that lies beneath the mural precipices.
In the spring, when snow melts on the high plateau, a beautiful cascade is seen at Waterfall Head ; its feathery, filmy, silver ribbon of plunging water is thrown out into exquisite relief by the rich background of that brownish basalt and tufa over which it drops. Another pretty little waterfall is to be seen just west of the village, at this season only, where it leaps from a low range of bluffs to the sea. The first-named cascade is more than four hun- dred feet in sheer unbroken precipitation.
One or two small, naked, pinnacle rocks, standing close in, and almost joined to the beach at the Sea Lion rookery, constitute the only outlying islets or rocks ; a stony kelp-bed at Zapadnie, and one off the Little Eastern rook. ery, both of limited reach seaward, are the only hindrances to a ship's sailing boldly round the island, even to scraping the bluffs, at places, safely with her yard-arms. I have located the Zapadnie shoal by observation from the bluffs above ; while Captain Baker, of the Reliance, sounded out the other.
229
WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS,
Siberian coasts far away to the northwest. The dark-brown tufa bluffs and the breccia walls at the east landing of St. Paul Island, known as " Black Bluffs," rise suddenly from the sea sixty to eighty feet, with stratified horizontal lines of light-gray calcareous con- glomerate, or cement, in which are embedded sundry fossils charac- teristic of and belonging to the Tertiary Age, such as Cardium grænlandicum, C. decoratum, and Astarte pectunculata, etc. This is the only locality within the purview of the Pribylov Islands where any palæntological evidence of their age can be found. These specimens, as indicated, are exceedingly abundant ; I brought down a whole series, gathered there at the east landing or " Nava- stock," in a short half-hour's search and labor.
Although small quantities of drift-wood lodge at all points of the coast, yet the greatest amount is found on the south shore, and thence around to Garden Cove ; this drift-timber is usually wholly stripped of its bark, principally pine and fir sticks, some of them quite large, eighteen inches or two feet in diameter. Several years occur when a large driftage will be thrown or stranded here ; then long intervals of many seasons will elapse with scarcely a log or stick coming ashore. I found at Garden Cove, in June, 1873, the well-preserved husk of a cocoanut, cast up by the surf on the beach : did I not know that it was most undoubtedly thrown over by some whaler in these waters, not many hundred miles away at the far- thest, I should have indulged in a pretty reverie as to its path in drifting from the South Seas to this lonely islet. I presume, how- ever, that the timber which the sea brings for the Pribylov Islands is that borne down upon the annual floods of the Kuskokvim and Nooshagak Rivers on the mainland, and to the east-northeastward, a trifle more than two hundred and twenty-five miles ; it comes, how- ever, in very scant supply. I saw very little drift-wood on St. Mat- thew Island ; but on the eastern shore of St. Lawrence there was an immense aggregate, which unquestionably came from the Yukon mouth.
The fact that fur-seals frequent these islands and those of Bering and Copper, on the Russian side, to the exclusion of other land, seems at first odd or singular, to say the least ; but when we come to examine the subject we find that those animals, when they repair hither to rest for two or three months on the land, as they must do by their habit during the breeding-season, require a cool, moist atmosphere, imperatively coupled with firm, well-drained
230
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
land, or dry broken rocks or shingle, rather, upon which to take their positions and remain undisturbed by the weather and the sea for a lengthy period of reproduction. If the rookery-ground is hard and flat, with an admixture of loam or soil, puddles are speed- ily formed in this climate, where it rains almost every day, and when not raining, rain-fogs take rapid succession and continue the satur- ation, making thus a muddy slime, which very quickly takes the hair off the animals whenever it plasters or wherever it fastens on them ; hence they carefully avoid any such landing. If they oc- cupy a sandy shore the rain beats that material into their large, sensitive eyes, and into their fur, so they are obliged, from simple irritation, to leave and return to the sea for relief.
This inspection of some natural characteristics of the Pribylov group renders it quite plain that the Seal Islands, now under discus- sion, offer to the Pinnipedia very remarkable advantages for landing, especially so at St. Paul, where the ground of basaltic rock and of volcanic tufa or cement slopes up from many points gradually above the sea, making thereby a perfectly adapted resting-place for any number, from a thousand to millions, of those intelligent animals, which can lie out here from May until October every year in per- fect physical peace and security. There is not a rod of ground of this character offered to these animals elsewhere in all Alaska, not on the Aleutian chain, not on the mainland, not on St. Matthew or St. Lawrence. Both of the latter islands were surveyed by myself, with special reference to this query, in 1874; every foot of St. Mat- thew shore-line was examined, and I know that the fur-seal could not rest on the low clayey flats there in contentment a single day ; hence he never has rested there, nor will he in the future. As to St. Lawrence, it is so ice-bound and snow-covered in spring and early summer, to say nothing of numerous other physical dis- advantages, that it never becomes of the slightest interest to fur- seals.
When Pribylov, in taking possession, landed on St. George a part of his little ship's crew, July, 1786, he knew that, as it was un- inhabited, it would be necessary to establish a colony there from which to draft laborers to do all killing, skinning, and curing of the peltries ; therefore he and his associates, and his rivals after him, imported natives of Oonalashka and Atkha-passive, docile Aleutes. They founded their first village a quarter of a mile to the eastward of one of the principal rookeries on St. George, now
231
WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
called " Starry Arteel," or " Old Settlement "; a village was also lo- cated at Zapadnie, and a succession of barraboras planted at Garden Cove. Then, during the following season, more men were brought up from Atkha and taken over to St. Paul, where five or six rival traders posted themselves on the north shore, near and at " Ma- roonitch," and at the head of the Big Lake, among the sand-dunes there. They were then, as they are now, somewhat given to riotous living if they only had the chance, and the ruins of the Big Lake settlement are pleasantly remembered by the descendants of those pioneers to-day, on St. Paul, who take off their hats as they pass by to affectionately salute, and call the place "Vesolia Mista," or "Jolly Spot "-the aged men telling me, in a low whisper, that "in those good old days they had plenty of rum." But, when the pres- sure of competition became great, another village was located at Polavina, and still another at Zapadnie, until the activity and un- scrupulous energy of all these rival settlements well-nigh drove out and eliminated the seals in 1796. Three years later the whole ter- ritory of Alaska passed into the hands of the absolute power vested in the Russian American Company. These islands were in the bill of sale, and early in 1799 the competing traders were turned off neck and heels from them, and the Pribylov group passed under the control of a single man, the iron-willed Baranov. The people on St. Paul were then all drawn together, for economy and warmth, into a single settlement at Polavina. Their life in those days must have been miserable. They were mere slaves, without the slightest redress from any insolence or injury which their masters might see fit, in petulance or brutal orgies, to inflict upon them. Here they lived and died, unnoticed and uncared for, in large barracoons half under ground and dirt-roofed, cold and filthy. Along toward the beginning or end of 1825, in order that they might reap the advan- tage of being located best to load and unload ships, the Polavina settlement was removed to the present village site, as indicated on the map, and the natives have lived there ever since.
On St. George the several scattered villages were abandoned, and consolidated at the existing location some years later, but for a different reason. The labor of bringing the seal-skins over to Garden Cove, which is the best and surest landing, was so great, and that of carrying them from the north shore to Zapadnie still greater, that it was decided to place the consolidated settlement at such a point between them, on the north shore, that the least trou-
232
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
ble and exertion of conveyance would be necessary. A better place, geographically, for the business of gathering the skins and salting them down at St. George cannot be found on the island, but a poorer place for a landing it is difficult to pick out, though in this respect there is not much choice outside of Garden Cove.
Up to the time of the transfer of the territory and leasing of the islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, in August, 1870, these native inhabitants all lived in huts or sod-walled and dirt- roofed houses, called " barrabkies," partly under ground. Most of these huts were damp, dark, and exceedingly filthy : it seemed to be the policy of a short-sighted Russian management to keep them so, and to treat the natives not near so well as they treated the few hogs and dogs which they brought up there for food and for com- pany. The use of seal-fat for fuel, caused the deposit upon every- thing within doors of a thick coat of greasy, black soot, strongly im- pregnated with a damp, moldy, and indescribably offensive odor. They found along the north shore of St. Paul and at Northeast Point, occasionally scattered pieces of drift-wood, which was used, carefully soaked anew in water if it had dried out, split into little fragments, and, trussing the blubber with it when making their fires, the combination gave rise to a roaring, spluttering blaze. If this drift-wood failed them at any time when winter came round, they were obliged to huddle together beneath skins in their cold huts, and live or die, as the case might be. But the situation to-day has changed marvellously. We see here now at St. Paul, and on St. George, in the place of the squalid, filthy habitations of the imme- diate past, two villages, neat, warm, and contented. Each family lives in a snug frame-dwelling ; every house is lined with tarred paper, painted, furnished with a stove, with out-houses, etc., com- plete ; streets laid out, and the foundations of these habitations reg- ularly plotted thereon. There is a large church at St. Paul, and a less pretentious but very creditable structure of the same character on St. George ; a hospital on St. Paul, with a full and complete stock of drugs, and skilled physicians on both islands to take care of the people, free of cost. There is a school-house on each island, in which teachers are also paid by the company eight months in the year, to instruct the youth, while the Russian Church is sustained entirely by the pious contributions of the natives themselves on these two islands, and sustained well by each other. There are eighty families, or eighty houses, on St. Paul, in the village, with
233
WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
twenty or twenty-four such houses to as many families at St. George, and eight other structures. The large ware-houses and salt-sheds of the Alaska Commercial Company, built by skilful mechanics, as have been the dwellings just referred to, are also neatly painted ; and, taken in combination with the other features, constitute a pict- ure fully equal to the average presentation of any one of our small eastern towns. There is no misery, no downcast, dejected, suffer- ing humanity here to-day. These Aleutes, who enjoy as a price of their good behavior, the sole right to take and skin seals for the company, to the exclusion of all other people, are known to and by their less fortunate neighbors elsewhere in Alaska as the "Bogat- skie Aloutov," or the " rich Aleutes." The example of the agents of the Alaska Commercial Company, on both islands, from the begin- ning of its lease, and the course of the Treasury agents during the last eight or nine years, have been silent but powerful promoters of the welfare of these people. They have maintained perfect order ; they have directed neatness, and cleanliness, and stimulated indus- try, such as those natives had never before dreamed of .* The chief source of sickness used to arise from the wretched character of the barrabkies in which they lived ; but it was, at first, a very difficult matter to get frame-houses to supplant successfully the sod-walled and dirt-roofed huts of the islands.
Many experiments, however, were made, and a dozen houses built, ere the result was as good as the style of primitive housing, when it had been well done and kept in best possible repair. In such a damp climate, naturally, a strong moldy smell pervades all inclosed rooms which are not thoroughly heated and daily dried by
* Surprise has often been genuine among those who inquire, over the fact that there is no law officer here at either village, and wonder is expressed why such provision is not made by the Government. But when the following facts relative to this subject are understood, it is at once clear that a justice of the peace and his constabulary would be entirely useless if established on the seal-islands. As these natives live here, they live as a single family in each settlement, having one common purpose in life and only one ; what one na- tive does, eats, wears, or says, is known at once to all the others, just as what- soever any member of our household may do will soon be known to us all who belong to its organization ; hence if they steal or quarrel among themselves, they keep the matter wholly to themselves, and settle it to their own satisfac- tion. Were there rival villages on the islands and diverse people and employ- ment, then the case would be reversed, and the need of legal machinery ap- parent.
234
OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
fires ; and, in the spring and fall, frost works through and drips and trickles like rain adown the walls. The present frame-houses occupied by the natives owe their dryness, their warmth, and pro- tection from the piercing " boorgas" to the liberal use of stout tarred paper in the lining. An overpowering mustiness of the hall- ways, ont-houses, and, in fact, every roofed-in spot, where a stove is not regularly used, even in the best-built residences, is one of the first disagreeable sensations which the new arrivals always experi- ence when they take up their quarters here. Perhaps, if it were not for the nasal misery that floats in from the killing-grounds to the novice, this musty, moldy state of things up here would be far more acute, as an annoyance, than it is now. The greater grief seems to soon fully absorb the lesser one ; at least, in my own case, I can affirm the result.
As they lived in early time, it was a physical impossibility for them to increase and multiply ; * but, since their elevation and their sanitary advancement are so marked, it may be reasonably expected that those people for all time to come will at least hold their own, even though they do not increase to any remarkable degree. Per- haps it is better that they should not. But it is exceedingly for- tunate that they do sustain themselves so as to be, as it were, a prosperous corporate factor, entitled to the exclusive privilege of labor on these islands. As an encouragement for their good be- havior the Alaska Commercial Company, in pursuance of its enlight- ened treatment of the whole subject, so handsomely exhibited by its housing of these people, has assured them that so long as they are capable and willing to perform the labor of skinning the seal- catch every year, so long will they enjoy the sole privilege of par- ticipating in that toil and its reward. This is wise on the part of the company, and it is exceedingly happy for the people. They are, of all men, especially fitted for the work connected with the seal-business-no comment is needed-nothing better in the way
* The population of St. Paul in 1880 was 298. Of these, 14 were whites (13 males and 1 female), 128 male Alentians, and 156 females. On St. George we have 92 souls : 4 white males, 35 male Aleutians, and 53 females, a total population on these islands of 390. This is an increase of between thirty and forty people since 1873. Prior to 1873 they had neither much increased nor diminished for fifty years, but would have fallen off rapidly (since the births were never equal to the deaths) had not recruits been regularly drawn from the mainland and other islands every season when the ships came up.
235
WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.
of manual labor, skilled and rapid, could be rendered by any body of men, equal in numbers, living under the same circumstances, all the year round. They appear to shake off the periodic lethargy of winter and its forced inanition, to rush with the coming of summer into the severe exercise and duty of capturing, killing, and skinning the seals, with vigor and with persistent and commendable energy.
To-day only a very small proportion of the population are de- scendants of the pioncers who were brought here by the several Russian companies in 1787 and 1788 ; a colony of one hundred and thirty-seven souls, it is claimed, principally recruited at Oonalashka and Atkha.
The Aleutes on the islands as they appear to-day have been so mixed in with Russian, Koloshian, and Kamschadale blood that they present characteristics, in one way or another, of all the vari- ous races of men from the negro up to the Caucasian. The pre- dominant features among them are small, wide-set eyes, broad and high cheek-bones, causing the jaw, which is full and square, to often appear peaked ; coarse, straight, black hair, small, neatly- shaped feet and hands, together with brownish-yellow complexion. The men will average in stature five feet four or five inches ; the women less in proportion, although there are exceptions to this rule among them, some being over six feet in height, and others are decided dwarfs. The manners and customs of these people to- day possess nothing in themselves of a barbarous or remarkable character aside from that which belongs to an advanced state of semi-civilization. They are exceedingly polite and civil, not only in their business with the agents of the company on the seal- islands, but among themselves, and they visit, the one with the other, freely and pleasantly, the women being great gossips ; but, on the whole, their intercourse is subdued, for the simple reason that the topics of conversation are few : and, judging from their silent but unconstrained meetings, they seem to have a mutual knowledge, as if by sympathy, as to what may be occupying each other's minds, rendering speech superfluous. It is only when un- der the influence of beer or strong liquor that they lose their natu- rally quiet and amiable disposition. They then relapse into low, drunken orgies and loud, brawling noises. * Having been so long
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