AUSTERE & DESOLATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1942, Page 4

AUSTERE & DESOLATE

THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS TOPS OF SUBMERGED MOUNTAINS IN BLEAK & STORM-SWEPT SEAS. The Aleutian Islands on the map where the North American continent tapers off to meet the Komandorf skies, or Commander Islands, trailing over from Asia, what are they like? Not in terms of war strategy which is a military secret, but in terms of weather, people, and history? It was in 1741 that Vitus Being discovered these islands. Two hundred years later Americans arc rediscovering them. Climatically, the islands have earn-) ed for themselves a bad reputation. k Buffeted by every wind that blows, smothered in fogs day in and out, with not a tree growing on them, they are described as desolate and lonely. TREES FEW & STUNTED. But in the quick-growing summer, grasses and flowers spring up lush and tall. Even the most unobservant sailors and soldiers write home that flowers grow there. Trees, however, cannot stand the incessant cold whip of the wind. A group of stunted evergreen trees planted there are a landmark. Willows and alders a few feet high grow along the streams. Statistics concerning the Islands are suddenly vital, that they are approximately 2,000 miles from Seattle and 1,718 miles from Tokio, that it is 800 miles from where False Pass separates them from mainland Alaska to the tip end of Attu and that it is only 400 miles farther to Petropovlovsk on Kamchatka Peninsula belonging to the Soviet Republic.

Scenically they have their own forbidding grandeur and appear to be just what they are, the tops of submerged mountains, part of which the romantic call the “lost continent.” The Coast and Geodetic Survey are never surprised when their lines suddenly drop from 250 fathoms to 2,000. A young man stationed there writes home, “These mountains shoot straight up out of the sea, and what I mean, ‘straight up.’ ” There are 150 of them from the largest, Unalaska Island, 65 miles long and 25 miles wide, to small pinnacles. Ships sailing from San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver to the Orient pass near the Aleutians in what is known as the circle tour. On a flat map this is not seen as a direct route but on a globe it is shown as the shortest one. Boats would prefer to pass through Unimak Pass and on through the more sheltered waters and shorter route north of the Islands but the course is treacherous and largely uncharted. Austere as the Aleutians are, they have been the home of men and animals and grass and flowers for centuries. They are peopled by the Aleuts, pronounced Al-eeoots, and not to be called Aleut Indians. They are neither Indian nor Eskimo, although related to the latter. PEOPLE WITH MODERN IDEAS. Captain Peter Wold, who for years.as trader and shipmaster, was the chief contact between the Islands and the world outside, describes the Aleuts as an intelligent people, modern in their ways of living, dressing largely from mail-order catalogues, showing a strong Russian influence with a marked Mongolian touch and speaking English with a Norwegian accent. A light is thrown on the modern Aleut in a document which they sent over a year ago to the Department of the Interior, protesting what they saw as the undue regulation of their fishing rights and regimenting of their children through Government schools, stating that they were not Indians and wanted, not ancient Indian crafts, taught to their children, but modern subjects and ways of living. Both the Aleuts and the Aleutian Islands are entering upon a new era. They will never be as lonely again. Defence construction of the past two years and all that is going on now under secrecy of the fog and of the censor are felt from Unimak Island with its smoking Mt. Shishaldin and grass growing there for- thousands of sheep to tne far-off Kiska, Rat Islands, Near Islands, and Attu, all parts of the chain. The lonely places with nothing but natives, a school teacher and a cannery, visited by Captain Wold in his good ship Fern, even they have felt the stir of a new day. Belofski, Chernofski, and Nikolski and the lighthouse at Sarichef and Scotch Gap that guard Unimak Pass have felt it too. On desolate islands inhabited by nothing but blue fox a great sound has- been heard. The sound is heard on Mt. Makushin and even north on the phantom Island Bagoslof. East of False Pass, sauatty little Unga, Squaw Harbour, and Sand Point. King’s Cove have already experienced a change. At Dutch Harbour there is a greater stir than there was in the days of the gold rush of Nome and the Kl-'ndike. The fogs will soon lift. —“Christian Science Monitor.”