During a few short excursions along the shores of Ounalaska Harbor and on two of the adjacent mountains, towards the end of May and beginning of October we saw about fifty species of flowering plants—empetrum, vaccinium, bryanthus, pyrola, arctostaphylos, ledum, cassiope, lupinus, zeranium, epilobium, silene, draba, and saxifraga being the most telling and characteristic of the genera represented. Empetrum nigrum, a bryanthus, and three species of vaccinium make a grand display when in flower and show their massed colors at a considerable distance.
Almost the entire surface of the valleys and hills and lower slopes of the mountains is covered with a dense spongy plush of lichens and mosses similar to that which cover the tundras of the Arctic regions, making a rich green mantle on which the showy flowering plants are strikingly relieved, though these grow far more luxuriantly on the banks of the streams where the drainage is less interrupted. Here also the ferns, of which I saw three species, are taller and more abundant, some of them arching their broad delicate fronds over one's shoulders, while in similar situations the tallest of the five grasses that were seen reaches a height of nearly six feet, and forms a growth close enough for the farmer's scythe.
Not a single tree has yet been seen on any of the islands of the chain west of Kodiak, excepting a few spruces brought from Sitka and planted at Ounalaska by the Russians about fifty years ago. They are still alive in a dwarfed condition, having made scarce any appreciable growth since they were planted. These facts are the more remarkable, since in Southeastern Alaska lying both to the north and south of here, and on the many islands of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as on the mainland, forests of beautiful conifers flourish exuberantly and attain noble dimensions, while the climatic conditions generally do not appear to differ greatly from those that obtain on these treeless islands.
Wherever cattle have been introduced they have prospered and grown fat on the abundance of rich nutritious pasturage to be found almost everywhere in the deep withdrawing valleys and on the green slopes of the hills and mountains, but the wetness of the summer months will always prevent the making of hay in any considerable quantities.
The agricultural possibilities of these islands seem also to be very limited. The hardier of the cereals—rye, barley, and oats—make a good vigorous growth, and head out, but seldom or never mature, on account of insufficient sunshine and overabundance of moisture in the form of long-continued drizzling fogs and rains. Green crops, however, as potatoes, turnips, cabbages, beets, and most other common garden vegetables, thrive wherever the ground is thoroughly drained and has a southerly exposure.
SAINT LAWRENCE ISLAND.
Saint Lawrence Island, as far as our observations extended, is mostly a dreary mass of granite and lava of various forms and colors, roughened with volcanic cones, covered with snow, and rigidly bound in ocean ice for half the year.
Inasmuch as it lies broadsidewise to the direction pursued by the great ice-sheet that recently filled Bering Sea, and its rocks offered unequal resistance to the denuding action of the ice, the island is traversed by numerous ridges and low gap-like valleys all trending in the same general direction, some of the lowest of these transverse valleys having been degraded nearly to the level of the sea, showing that had the glaciation to which the island has been subjected been slightly greater we should have found several islands here instead of one.
At the time of our first visit, May 28, winter still had full possession, but eleven days later we found the dwarf willows, drabas, crizerons, saxifrages pushing up their buds and leaves, on spots bare of snow, with wonderful rapidity. This was the beginning of spring at the northwest end of the island. On July 4 the flora seemed to have reached its highest development. The bottoms of the glacial valleys were in many places covered with tall grasses and carices evenly planted and forming meadows of considerable size, while the drier portions and the sloping grounds about them were enlivened with gay highly-colored flowers from an inch to nearly two feet in height—Aconitum Napellus, L. var. delphinifolium ser. Polemonium cœruleum, L. Papaver nudicaule, Draba alpina, and Silene acaulis in large closely flowered tufts, Andromeda, Ledum Linnæa, Cassiope, and several species of Vaccinium and Saxifraga.
SAINT MICHAEL'S.