Volcanic Action in Alaska
PROF. GEORGE DAVIDSON has communicated to Science the following particulars of recent volcanic action in Alaska: "The explosion of October 6, 1883, split perpendicularly in twain the mountain of St. Augustine, situated on the island of the same name, forty-nine miles west of the settlement on Port Graham or English Harbor, in Cook's Inlet, Alaska. Vast columns of smoke were seen to rise from the summit of the mountain, a column of white vapor rose from the sea near the island, and a great earthquake wave, twenty-five to thirty feet high, came upon Port Graham, followed by two other waves, estimated at eighteen and fifteen feet. Had it not been low water, all the people of the settlement would have been lost. The tides rise and fall about fourteen feet. Captain Sands, who was at English Harbor, states that if there were plenty of water in the line of rupture of the mountain, it would be possible for a vessel to sail through. Captain Culkie, of the schooner Kodiak, who approached St. Augustine on November 10, found a new island about a mile and a half long and seventy-five feet high, that had been upheaved in the ten-fathom passage between the island and the mainland. At the same time two extinct volcanoes on the Alaskan Peninsula, reported to be about west from the active volcano Iliamna (12,000 feet high), burst into activity. A party of Aleuts, living on the island, are supposed to be lost."