Unalaska's commercial glory has faded. It was once port of entry for all vessels passing in or out of Behring Sea; the ships of the Arctic whaling fleet called here for water, coal, supplies, and mail; during the years that the modus vivendi was in force it was headquarters of the United States and the British fleets patrolling Behring Sea, and lines of captured sealers often lay here at anchor.
During the early part of the present decade Unalaska saw its most prosperous times. Thousands of people waited here for transportation to the Klondike, via St. Michael and the Yukon. Many ships were built here, and one still lies rotting upon the ways.
The Greek church is second in size and importance to the one at Sitka only, and the bishop once resided here. There is a Russian parish school, a government day-school, and a Methodist mission, the Jessie Lee Home. The only white women on the island reside at the Home. The bay has frequently presented the appearance of a naval parade, from the number of government and other vessels lying at anchor.
No traveller will weary soon of Unalaska. There are caves and waterfalls to visit, and unnumbered excursions to make to beautiful places among the hills. Especially interesting is Samghanooda, or English, Harbor, where Cook mended his ships; while Makushin Harbor, on the western coast, where Glottoff and his Russians first landed in 1756, is only thirty miles away.
The great volcano itself is easy of ascent, and the view from its crest is one of the memories of a lifetime. Borka, a tiny village at Samghanooda, is as noted for its Dutch-like cleanliness as Belkoffski is for its filth.
The other islands of the Aleutian chain drift on to westward, lonely, unknown—almost, if not entirely, uninhabited. Now and then a small trading settlement is found, which is visited only by Captain Applegate,—the last remaining white deep-sea otter hunter,—and once a year by a government cutter, or the Russian priest from Unalaska, or a shrewd and wandering trader.
These green and unknown islands are the islands of my dreams—and dreams do "come true" sometimes. This voyage out among the Aleutians is the most poetic and enchanting in the world to-day; and I shall never be entirely happy until I have drifted on out to the farthest island of Attu, lying within the eastern hemisphere, and watched those lonely, dark women, with the souls of poets and artists and the patience of angels, weaving their dreams into ravishing beauty and sending them out into the world as the farewell messages of a betrayed and vanishing people. As we treat them for their few remaining years, so let us in the end be treated.
Alaska is to-day the centre of the world's volcanic activity, and the mountainous appearances and disappearances that have been recorded in the Aleutian Islands are marvellous and awesome. To these upheavals in the North Pacific and Behring Sea Whidbey's adjectives, "stupendous," "tremendous," and "awfully dreadful," might be appropriately applied.