The sand that plays so important a part in the formation of the Island of St. Paul, and which is almost entirely wanting in and around the others of this Pribylov group, is principally composed of _Foraminifera_, together with _Diatomacea_, mixed in with a volcanic base of fine comminuted black and reddish lavas and old friable gray slates. It constitutes the chief beauty of the sea-shore here, for it changes color like a chameleon, as it passes from wet to dry, being a rich steely-black at the surf-margin and then drying out to a soft purplish-brown and gray, succeeding to tints most delicate of reddish and pale neutral, when warmed by the sun and drifting up on to the higher ground with the wind. The sand-dune tracts on this island are really attractive in the summer, especially so during those rare days when the sun comes out, and the unwonted light shimmers over them and the most luxuriant grass and variety of beautiful flowers which exist in profusion thereon. In past time, as these sand and boulder bars were forming on St. Paul Island, they, in making across from islet to islet, enclosed small bodies of sea-water. These have, by evaporation and time, by the flooding of rains and annual melting of snow, become, nearly every one of them, fresh; they are all, great and small, well shown on my map, which locates quite a large area of pure water. In them, as I have hinted, are no reptiles; but an exquisite species of a tiny fish[96] exists in the lagoon-estuary near the village, and the small pure-water lakes of the natives just under the flanks of Telegraph Hill. The Aleutes assured me that they had caught fish in the big lake toward Northeast Point, when they lived in their old village out there; but, I never succeeded in getting a single specimen. The waters of these pools and ponds are fairly alive with vast numbers of minute _Rotifera_, which sport about in all of them wherever they are examined. Many species of water-plants, pond-lilies, algæ, etc., are found in those inland waters, especially in that large lake “Mee-sulk-mah-nee,” which is very shallow.