certain, however, that there is warm water enough, abnormal to the latitude, for the evolution of those characteristic fog-banks, which almost discomfited Pribylov, at the time of his discovery of the islands, nearly one hundred years ago, and which have remained ever since. Without this fog the fur-seal would never have rested there as he has done; but when he came on his voyage of discovery, ages ago, up from the rocky coasts of Patagonia mayhap, had he not found this cool, moist temperature of St. Paul and St. George, he would have kept on, completed the circuit, and returned to those congenial antipodes of his birth. Speaking of the stormy weather brings to my mind the beautiful, varied, and impressive nephelogical display in the heavens overhead here during October and November. I may say, without exaggeration, that the cloud-effects which I have witnessed from the bluffs of this little island, at this season of the year, surpass anything 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 appearance 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 mountains 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 people: he advanced what he considered a very plausible theory for the cause of the aurora; he cited an ancient sage, who believed that the change of winds threw the saline particles of the sea high into the air, and then by aërial 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” occurred, 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 recollect aright, and my Russian served me well, one of the old natives told me that it was no mystery, this light of the