Where the Sea Breaks Its Back Quotes

“The name Alaska is probably an abbreviation of Unalaska, derived from the original Aleut word agunalaksh, which means "the shores where the sea breaks its back." The war between water and land is never-ending. Waves shatter themselves in spent fury against the rocky bulwarks of the coast; giant tides eat away the sand beaches and alter the entire contour of an island overnight; williwaw winds pour down the side of a volcano like snow sliding off a roof, building to a hundred-mile velocity in a matter of minutes and churning the ocean into a maelstrom where the stoutest vessels founder.”
― Corey Ford, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The Epic Story of the Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska

“circumspect deliberateness,”
― Corey Ford, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The Epic Story of the Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska

“His bed was a little depression in the floor of his underground shelter, and the loose sand sifted between the uprights and trickled down the sides into the hollow. Bit by bit it covered his feet, then his legs, and finally his thighs, until he lay half-buried like the hulk of the St. Peter. When Steller sought to remove the sand, the Captain Commander opened his eyes and his voice seemed to come from very far away. “Let me be,” he murmured. “The deeper in the ground I lie, the warmer I am; only the part of me that is above ground suffers from the cold.” He died two hours before daylight on December eighth, and his body had to be exhumed in order to give him decent burial.”
― Corey Ford, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The Epic Story of the Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska