The two seal islands leased to the Alaska Commercial Company are about thirty miles apart, and are seemingly among the most insignificant landmarks known in the ocean. It is only on very modern maps that they are designated at all, but they afford to the seals the happiest isolation and shelter, their position being such as to envelop them in fog banks nine days out of ten during the entire season of resort. Neither the seals nor the natives can long bear the glare of the summer sun, and so find no fault with this prevailing screen between them and the sky. There are no icebergs, properly so called, in these waters. Behring Strait is too shallow for anything but light field ice to pass into the North Pacific or Behring Sea; there is therefore no fear of visits from the polar bears often seen floating about in the frozen sea at the north. They would make sad havoc among the seals were they to get so far south, and drive them away altogether. Ice floats off from the immediate shores in the spring, but encountering the thermal current, this soon dissolves, and is no impediment to navigation. It is marvelous that the natives dwelling on the group do not die of the poisoned atmosphere arising from the thousands upon thousands of seal carcasses annually slaughtered, and which are left to decay upon the ground. The stench thus created is so powerful that vessels sailing to leeward, three or four miles off shore, are permeated by it, and though their captains may not have been able to get a solar observation for many days, they can easily tell their exact latitude and longitude by “dead reckoning.” Naval surgeons have been detached by government to visit and examine the physical condition of the people on St. George and St. Paul, touching this very matter, and they have reported that the natives enjoyed good health, the mortality among them being at a very low average compared with that of other semi-civilized communities favorably situated. There is a church and school-house on each of the islands, with white teachers, and also a skilled physician, who is paid for his services by the Commercial Company.