Our Arctic province : $b Alaska and the Seal IslandsElliott, Henry Wood
History
Our Arctic province : $b Alaska and the Seal Islands
Elliott, Henry Wood
Alaska -- Description and travel
The backbone of St. Paul, running directly east and west, from shore
to shore, between Polavina Point and Einahnuhto Hills, constitutes
the high land of that island: Polavina Sopka, an old extinct
cinder-crater, five hundred and fifty feet; Bogaslov, an upheaved
mass of splinted lava, six hundred feet; and the hills frowning over
the bluffs there, on the west shore, are also six hundred feet in
elevation above the sea. But the average height of the upland between
is not much over one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet above
water-level, rising here and there into little hills and broad, rocky
ridges, which are minutely sketched upon the map. From the northern
base of Polavina Sopka a long stretch of low sand-flats extends,
enclosing the great lake, and ending in a narrow neck where it unites
with Novastoshnah, or Northeast Point. Here that volcanic nodule
known as Hutchinson’s Hill, with its low, gradual slopes, trending to
the east and southward, makes a rocky foundation secure and broad,
upon which the great single rookery of the island, the greatest in
the world, undoubtedly, is located. The natives say that when they
first came to these islands Novastoshna was an island by itself, to
which they went in boats from Vesolia Mista; and the lagoon now so
tightly enclosed was then an open harbor in which the ships of the
old Russian Company rode safely at anchor. To-day, no vessel drawing
ten feet of water can safely get nearer than half a mile of the
village, or a mile from this lagoon at low tide.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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