Note 100 — Chapter IX · WONDERFUL SEAL ISLANDS.

The profile of the coast of St. George’s Island, which I give on the map, presents clearly an idea of its characteristic, bold, abrupt elevation from the sea. From the Garden Cove around to Zapadnie beach there is no natural opportunity for a man to land; then, again, from Zapadnie beach round to Starry Arteel there is not a sign of a chance for an agile man to come ashore and reach the plateau above. From Starry Arteel to the Great Eastern rookery there is an alternation, between the several breeding-grounds, of three low and gradual slopes of the land to sea-level; these, with the landing at Garden Cove and at Zapadnie, are the only spots of the St. George coast where we can come ashore. An active person can scramble up at several steep places between the Sea Lion rookery and Tolstoi Mees, but the rest of that extended bluffy sea-wall, which I have just defined, is wholly inaccessible from the water. A narrow strip of rough, rocky shingle, washed over by every storm-beaten sea, is all that lies beneath the mural precipices.

In the spring, when snow melts on the high plateau, a beautiful cascade is seen at Waterfall Head; its feathery, filmy, silver ribbon of plunging water is thrown out into exquisite relief by the rich background of that brownish basalt and tufa over which it drops. Another pretty little waterfall is to be seen just west of the village, at this season only, where it leaps from a low range of bluffs to the sea. The first-named cascade is more than four hundred feet in sheer unbroken precipitation.

One or two small, naked, pinnacle rocks, standing close in, and almost joined to the beach at the Sea Lion rookery, constitute the only outlying islets or rocks; a stony kelp-bed at Zapadnie, and one off the Little Eastern rookery, both of limited reach seaward, are the only hindrances to a ship’s sailing boldly round the island, even to scraping the bluffs, at places, safely with her yard-arms. I have located the Zapadnie shoal by observation from the bluffs above; while Captain Baker, of the Reliance, sounded out the other.