596 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap, xv 



It was the desire to procure for our museums the skins or 

 skeletons of the many remarkable mammalia occurring here, also 

 to compare the present state of the island which for nearly a 

 century and a half has been exposed to the unsparing thirst of 

 man for sport and plunder, with Steller's spirited and picturesque 

 description, which led me to include a visit to the island in the 

 plan of the expedition. The accounts I got at Behring Island 

 from the American newspapers of the anxiety which our 

 wintering had caused in Europe led me indeed to make our 

 stay there shorter than I at first intended. Our harvest of 

 collections and observations was at all events extraordinarily 

 abundant. But before I proceed to give an account of our own 

 stay on the island, I must devote a few words to its discovery 

 and the first wintering there, which has a quite special interest 

 from the island having never before been trodden b}^ the foot of 

 man. The abundant animal life, then found there, gives us 

 therefore one of the exceedingly few representations we possess 

 of the animal world as it was before man, the lord of the creation, 

 appeared. 



After Behring' s vessel had drifted about a considerable time 

 at random in the Behring Sea, in consequence of the severe 

 scurvy-epidemic, which had spread to nearly all the men on 

 board, without any dead reckoning being kept, and finally with- 

 out sail or helmsman, literally at the naercy of wind and waves, 

 those on board on the Y^^^ November, 1741, sighted land, off whose 

 coast the vessel was anchored the following day at 5 o'clock p.m. 

 An hour after the cable gave way, and an enormous sea threw 

 the vessel towards the shore-cliffs. All appeared to be already 

 lost. But the vessel, instead of being driven ashore by new 

 waves, came unexpectedly into a basin 4^ fathoms deep sur- 

 rounded by rocks and with quite still water, being connected 

 with the sea only by a single narrow opening. If the unmanage- 

 able vessel had not drifted just to that place it would certainly 

 have gone to pieces, and all on board would have perished. 



It was only with great difficulty that the sick crew could put 

 out a boat in which Lieut. Waxel and Steller landed. They 

 found the land uninhabited, devoid of wood, and rminviting. But 

 a rivulet with fresh clear water purled yet unfrozen down the 

 mountain sides, and in the sand hills along the coast were found 

 some deep pits, which when enlarged and covered with sails 

 could be used as dwellings. The men who could still stand on 

 their legs all joined in this work. On the yth November the 

 sick could be removed to land, but, as often happens, many died 

 when they were brought out of the cabin into the fresh air, others 

 while they were being carried from the vessel or immediately 

 after they came to land. All in whom the scurvy had taken the 

 upper hand to that extent that they were already lying in bed 



