Evening star., 1899-08-12
MAJESTIC sHIsHALDIN
Suggested as Most Profitable Field for
Exploration.
No White Mans Foot Has Yet Trod
the Higher slopes of This
Splendid Cone.

Jos. Stanley Brown in the National Geographic
Magazine
The areas within the boundaries of the
United States yet untrod by the geologist
or explorer are rapidly becoming fewer and
fewer, while fields offering unique features
of interest to either class of investigators
are indeed rare. Even Alaska, formerly
Stunned. is now much in evidence, and is
being traversed by private and govern
mental exploring parties to an extent which
promises soon to gridiron that northern
wilderness with mail routes and Travelled
trails, while from the systematic work be-
ing carried on by means of river, land and
sea we may expect at no distant day far
more satisfactory geologic and topographic
maps of the territory's vast and previously
little known interior than have heretofore
existed. Leaving these broader areas to
those having special reasons and ample
financial resources for surmounting the
great obstacles they offer, attention is ask
ed to limited field of exploration, which
for compactness, accessibility, economy of
effort and expense and probable richness of
returns, stands unrivaled today within our
borders.
The route from Sitka to Unalaska has
been one of continuous travel by seagoing
vessels for many years. While making this
journey hundreds of voyagers have looked
on and exclaimed over the majestic beauty
of Mount Shishaldin but so far as known
no white mans foot has yet trod the higher
slopes of this splendid cone, which rears its
snow-clad crest nearly 5000 feet above the
adjacent sea. The eastern half of Unimak
Island is occupied by 1t and the associated
peaks. This island, some seventy miles
long, with an average width of fifteen or
twenty miles. crowded with extinct vol
canoes and separated only by shallow
pass from the Alaskan peninsula, Is the
first member of the Aleutian archipelago
that chain of submerged mountains which,
with Its prolongation, the Commander Is
IanQS, sweeps from continent To CnntinGnf
describing across the North Pacific ocean
an arc of more than thousand miles.
Shishaldin is undoubtedly still an active
Voicano, but how active cannot be accurate
ly known until some explorer stands on its
summit. There are recent stories by some
who claim to have seen f1ame-colored va
pors rising from it, and by others who
assert they saw columns Of smoke ascend
ing In 1897 / saw what appeared to be
banners OF steam issuing from it; but fogs
are frequent here and snow carried by the
WlRdS about the peaks of mountains of high
attitudes play deceitful pranks. There are
two very intelligent and well-to-do traders
tCharles Rosenberg and Charles Swanson)
who live with their families at Morshovia
village, near the base of the mountain
While on a trip in their schooner to Dutch
Harbor, Unalaska bay, last summer for
supplies they told me that the volcano is
now in state Of eruption, and that at
night they had seen, high on the slopes,
tongues of molten lava creeping slowly
down the mountain side and branching
around obstacles lying in their course, thus
leaving islands between the fiery streams
They asserted also that ashes are elected
from the crater, and that on hunting trips
they had ascended far enough to detect the
heat and recognize the sulphurous fumes.
Unlmak Island alone, with the story of
Voicanism it has to tell, is well worth a
summers work, but near by, within a circle
Of hundred miles radius, there are other
volcanoes with more or less residual life
which, with Shishaldin, form a group so
favorably situated for exploration that its
systematic study could be accomplished
without great expense and in q short field
season Pogrumnoi. on the western end of
unimak, is extinct; but on Akutar the next
island, there is an active volcano of the
same name. One unusually favorable day
In August, 1882 Mr. Charles II. Townsend
of the United States fish commission and [
climbed one of the peaks of Cnalaska bay
Which brought Akutan in full view. To our
great surprise we saw gigantic rings of
smoke, such as sometimes come in miDia-
ture from the smokestaclSs of locomotives,
issuing from the crater at regular intervals
of about twenty minutes. AS each succeed
ing ring appeared, its predecessor was slow
~ breaking up and fading away in the air
-Four such rings were seen, but how long
the display lasted 1t was not possible to de-
termine, as the peak became obscured In
drifting banners of fog.
On Unalaska Island is the huge volcanic
mass of Makushin between 5000 and 5000
feet high. From the reports of those who
nave ascended Makushin, it would seem
that fumarole action is all that is left Of
Its plutonic fires; but earthquakes, some Of
decided vfgor, are annually felt in the 10
caiity, while the many adjacent cfnder
cones and craters testify to the activity Of
other days.
Some forty or fifty miles from Urnalaska
in north Of west direction are the two
tiny dots of rock which compose Bogoslov
Gonna Bogoslova), whose origin was within
historic time and whose form has under
gone changes quite recently. Columns of
steam steadily rise from one OF the mounds
and here the warm earth temperature Is
now utilized. as some one has playfuIIy
suggested, to assist in the Matching of thu,
eggs of the myriads of guiiiemots, which
in company with a colony Of sea lions, oc-
cupy these volcanic remnants. The other
member of the group, connected with its
neighbor by low-lying strip of sand, is