Our first landing, early in the morning of August 5th, was at the spot under Cub Hill, near Cape Upright, the easternmost point of the island. The air came out from the northwest cold and chilly, and snow and ice were on the hill-sides and in the gullies. The sloping sides and summits of these hills were of a grayish, russet tinge, with deep-green swale flats running down into the lowlands, which are there more intensely green and warmer in tone. A pebble-bar formed by the sea between Cape Upright and Waterfall Head is covered with a deep stratum of glacial drift, carried down from the flanks of Polar and Cub Hills, and extending over two miles of this water-front to the westward, where it is met by a similar washing from that quarter. Back, and in the centre of this neck, are several small lakes and lagoons without fish; but emptying into them are a number of clear, lively brooks, in which were salmon-parr of fine quality. The little lakes undoubtedly receive them; hence they were land-locked salmon. A luxuriant growth of thick moss and grass, interspersed, existed almost everywhere on the lowest ground; and occasionally strange dome-like piles of peat were lifted four or five feet above marshy swales, and appeared so remarkably like abandoned barraboras that we repeatedly turned from our course to satisfy ourselves personally to the contrary.
As these lowlands ascend to the tops of higher hills, all vegetation changes rapidly to a simple coat of cryptogamic gray and light russet, with a slippery slide for the foot wherever a steep flight or climbing was made. Water oozes and trickles everywhere under foot, since an exhalation of frost is in progress all the time. Sometimes these swales rise and cross hill-summits to the valleys again without any interruption in their wet, swampy character. The action of ice in rounding down and grinding hills, chipping bluffs, and chiselling everywhere, carrying the soil and débris into depressions and valleys, is most beautifully exhibited on St. Matthew. The hills at the foot of Sugar-loaf Cone are bare and literally polished by ice-sheets and slides of melting snow. Rocks and soil from these summits and slopes are carried down and “dumped,” as it were, in numberless little heaps beneath, so that the foot of every hill and out on the plain around strongly put us in mind of those refuse-piles which are dropped over the commons or dumping-grounds of a city. Nowhere can the work of ice be seen to finer advantage than here, aided and abetted, as it undoubtedly is, by the power of wind, especially with regard to that chiselling action of frost on the faces of ringing metallic porphyry cliffs.
The flora here is as extensive as on the Seal Islands, two hundred miles to the southward; but the species of gramma are not near so varied. Indeed, there is very little grass around about. Wherever there is soil it seems to be converted by the abundant moisture into a swale or swamp, over which we travelled as on a quaking water-bed; but on the rounded hilltops and ridge-summits wind-driven and frost-splintered shingle makes good walking. Both of these climatic agencies evidently have a permanent iron grip on this island.
The west end of St. Matthew differs materially from the east. A fantastic weathering of the rocks at Cathedral Point, Hall Island, will strike the eye of a most casual observer as his ship enters the straits going south. This eastern wall of that point looms up from the water like a row of immense cedar-tree trunks. The scaling off of basaltic porphyry and a growth of yellowish-green and red mossy lichens made the effect most real, while a vast bank of fog lying just overhead seemed to shut out from our vision the foliage and branches that should be above. This north cape of Hall Island changes when approached, with every mile’s distance, to a new and altogether different profile.
Our visit at the west end of the island of St. Matthew was, geologically speaking, the most interesting experience I have ever had in Alaska. A geologist who may desire to study the greatest variety of igneous forms in situ, within a short and easy radius, can do no better than make his survey here. These rocks are not only varied by mineral colors, together with a fantastic arrangement of basalt and porphyry, but are rich and elegant in their tinting by the profuse growth of lichens—brown, yellow, green, and bronze.
An old Russian record prepared us, in landing, to find bears here, but it did not cause us to be equal to the sight we saw, for we met bears—yea, hundreds of them. I was going to say that I saw bears here as I had seen seals to the south, but that, of course, will not do, unless as a mere figure of speech. During the nine days that we were busy in surveying this island, we never were one moment, while on land, out of sight of a bear or bears; their white forms in the distance always answered to our search, though they ran from our immediate presence with a wild celerity, travelling in a swift, shambling gallop, or trotting off like elephants. Whether due to the fact that they were gorged with food, or that the warmer weather of summer subdued their temper, we never could coax one of these animals to show fight. Its first impulse and its last one, while within our influence, was flight—males, females, and cubs—all, when surprised by us, rushing with one accord right, left, and in every direction, over the hills and far away.
After shooting half a dozen, we destroyed no more, for we speedily found that we had made their acquaintance at the height of their shedding-season, and their snowy and highly prized winter-dress was a very different article from the dingy, saffron-colored, grayish fur that was flying like downy feathers in the wind, when ever rubbed or pulled by our hands. They never growled, or uttered any sound whatever, even when shot or wounded.
Here, on the highest points, where no moss ever grows, and nothing but a fine porphyritic shingle slides and rattles beneath our tread, are bear-roads leading from nest to nest, or stony lairs, which they have scooped out of frost-splintered débris on the hill-sides, and where old she-bears undoubtedly bring forth their young: but it was not plain, because we saw them only sleeping, at this season of the year, on the lower ground; they seemed to delight in stretching themselves upon, and rolling over, the rankest vegetation.
They sleep soundly, but fitfully, rolling their heavy arms and legs about as they doze. For naps they seem to prefer little grassy depressions on the sunny hill-sides and along the numerous water-courses, and their paths were broad and well beaten all over the island. We could not have observed less than two hundred and fifty or three hundred of these animals while we were there; at one landing on Hall Island there were sixteen in full sight at one sweep of our eyes, scampering up and off from the approach of the ship’s boat.
Provided with more walrus-meat than he knows what to do with, the polar bear, in my opinion, has never cared much for the Seal Islands; the natives have seen them, however, on St. Paul, and its old men have their bear stories, which they tell to a rising generation. The last “medvait” killed on St. Paul Island was shot at Bogaslov in 1848; none have ever come down since, and very few were there before, but those few evidently originated at and made St. Matthew Island their point of departure. Hence I desire to notice this hitherto unexplored spot, standing, as it does, two hundred miles to the northward of St. Paul, and which, until Lieutenant Maynard and myself, in 1874, surveyed and walked over its entire coast-line, had not been trodden by white men, or by natives, since that dismal record made by a party of five Russians and seven Aleutes who passed the winter of 1810-11 on it, and who were so stricken down with scurvy as to cause the death of all the Russians save one, while the rest barely recovered and left early the following year. We found the ruins of those huts which had been occupied by this unfortunate and discomfited party of fur-hunters; they were landed there to secure polar bears in the depth of winter, when such shaggy coats should be the finest.