important because it determined the surroundings among which the
first Americans lived for many generations. It has sometimes been
thought that the red men came to America by way of the Kurile
Islands, Kamchatka, and the Aleutian Islands. If this was their
route, they avoided a migration of two or three thousand miles
through one of the coldest and most inhospitable of regions.
This, however, is far from probable. The distance from Kamchatka
to the first of the Aleutian Islands is over one hundred miles.
As the island is not in sight from the mainland, there is little
chance that a band of savages, including women, would
deliberately sail thither. There is equally little probability
that they walked to the island on the ice, for the sea is never
frozen across the whole width. Nevertheless the climate may at
that time have been colder than now. There is also a chance that
a party of savages may have been blown across to the island in a
storm. Suppose that they succeeded in reaching Bering Island, as
the most Asiatic of the Aleutians is called, the next step to
Copper Island would be easy. Then, however, there comes a stretch
of more than two hundred miles. The chances that a family would
ever cross this waste of ocean are much smaller than in the first
case. Still another possibility remains. Was there once a bridge
of land from Asia to America in this region? There is no evidence
of such a link between the two continents, for a few raised
beaches indicate that during recent geological times the Aleutian
Islands have been uplifted rather than depressed.

The passage from Asia to America at Bering Strait, on the other
hand, is comparatively easy. The Strait itself is fifty-six miles
wide, but in the middle there are two small islands so that the
longest stretch of water is only about thirty-five miles.