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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/487

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THE BOGOSLOFS
483

in by vessels touching at the harbor. Earthquake shocks lasting 30 seconds are reported for May 20 and 23 by the keeper of the light at Scotch Cap on Unimak Island, and a 'pretty severe shake' occurred at Dutch Harbor on June 2, but nothing is reported for April or early May, when the new island must have risen. Certainly there could not have been any activity displayed by Makushin or Akutan, both of which volcanoes overlook Unalaska and Dutch Harbor, without being observed by the people of these villages. Perhaps the rise of such an island, in a more or less plastic condition, as it must be, would not necessarily be attended by disturbance in the solid crust of the neighboring islands. On the Pribilof Islands, which had an origin similar to that of the Bogoslofs, no earthquake shock or other disturbance was noted, although

Fire Island, One of the Old Bogoslof Islands.

these islands were affected at the time of the rise of New Bogoslof in 1883. The Pribilof group lie 120 miles to the north of the Bogoslofs.

On the whole, however, the weight of evidence at present seems to favor the idea that the Bogoslof disturbance of 1906 was local in character and the coincidence in date with the California earthquake involves no actual relation between the two phenomena.

The writers first saw the islands of Bogoslof in July, 1896, while en route for the Pribilof Islands in connection with the fur seal investigations. The U. S. Fish Commission Steamer Albatross attempted to land the commission on Old Bogoslof, but was prevented by the heavy surf, and the thick weather made only a partial view of the islands possible. The vessel afterwards passed the islands on its way to the