All three of these Bogoslof islands, which are about 120 miles south of the Pribyloff Islands, belonging to Russia in the Behring Sea, have risen above the waters hot and steaming in the last 150 years. The oldest Bogoslof, now called Castle Island, rose from the sea in 1796; and Kotzebue describes the first glimpse of it, as seen by a trader, named Krinkof, who had been forced to seek refuge from a storm on a neighbouring island. The birth of the volcanic islet was accompanied by an earthquake which shook the island where the trader had taken refuge, and by an outburst of fire with thunderous explosions. The island was said to emit fire for months afterwards, and for eight years afterwards the water round it was warm and its ashes unbearably hot. The eruption of 1883, in which the second Bogoslof, called Fire Island, was born, had no witnesses; but in September of that year great volumes of steam and smoke, accompanied by showers of ashes, were thrown out from the summit and through fissures in the sides and base, the bright reflections from the heated interior being visible at night. At the time of this eruption a severe earthquake was felt in the sea off Cape Mendocino, apparently in the line of the Californian furrow or rift. The islands were visited in 1884 by the officers of the U.S. revenue cutter _Corwin_, and Lieutenant J. C. Cantwell and Surgeon H. W. Yemans made the ascent of New Bogoslof. Lieutenant Cantwell thus describes his experience in the _Cruise of the Corwin_:-- "The sides of New Bogoslof rise with a gentle slope to the crater. The ascent at first appears easy, but a thin layer of ashes, formed into a crust by the action of rain and moisture, is not strong enough to sustain a man's weight. At every step my feet crushed through the outer covering and I sank at first ankle deep, and later on knee deep, into a soft, almost impalpable dust, which arose in clouds and nearly suffocated me. As the summit was reached the heat of the ashes became unbearable.... On all sides of the cone there are openings through which steam escaped with more or less energy." Seven years after that Drs. Merriam and Mendenhall, of the Behring Sea Seal Commission, found the newer island still smoking, steaming, and occasionally roaring like a giant steam escape. The older island had quite cooled, and had become a sheer cliff or hill of cold ashes, and was, and is, the home of countless sea birds, as well as of a small herd of sea lions. Captain Cook, in the eighteenth century, had passed by the neighbourhood of this island. This was eighteen years, however, before it was born, and he named a pillar of ash or rock which he found there Ship Rock. Ship Rock fell in ruins five years after the birth of Fire Island.