ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 9 



posed winter resting places of the fur seal, and forthwith a hundred 

 schooners and shallops sailed into storm and fog to the northward 

 occasionally, but generally to the southward, in search of this rumored 

 breeding ground. Indeed, if the record can be credited, the whole 

 bent of this Russian attention and search for the fur-seal islands was 

 devoted to that region south of the Aleutian Islands, between Japan 

 and Oregon. 



Pribilof's discovery of the islands which bear his name. — 

 Hence it was not until 1786, after more than eighteen years of unre- 

 mitting search by hardy navigators, that tlie Pribilof Islands were 

 discovered. It seems that a rugged Muscovitic " stoorman," or ship's 

 "mate,"Gehrman Pribilof by name, serving under the direction and 

 in the pay of one of the many comjjanies engaged in the fur business 

 at that time, was much moved and exercised in his mind by the reve- 

 lations of an old Aleutian shaman at Unalaska, who pretended to 

 recite a legend of the natives, wherein he declared that certain islands 

 in the Bering Sea had long been known to Aleuts.^ 



Pribilof commanded a small sloop, the St. George, which he employed 

 for three successive years in constant, though fruitless, explorations 

 to the northward of Unalaska and Unimak, ranging over the whole 

 of Bering Sea from the straits above. His ill success does not now 

 seem strange when we understand the currents, the wind, and fogs of 

 those waters. Why, only recently, the writer himself has been on one 

 of the best-manned vessels that ever sailed from any jDort, i^rovided 

 with good charts and equipped with all the marine machinery known 

 to navigation, and that vessel has hovered for nine successive daj^s 

 off the north point and around St. Paul Island, sometimes almost on 

 the reef, and never more than 10 miles away, without actually know- 

 ing where the island was. So Pribilof did well, considering, since at 

 the beginning of the third summer's tedious search, in June, 1786, his 

 old slooj) ran up against the walls of Tolstoi Mees, at St. George, and 

 when, though the fog was so thick that he could see scarce the length 

 of his vessel, his ears were regaled by the sweet music of seal rookeries 

 wafted out to him on the heavj^ air. He knew then that he had found 

 the object of his search, and he at once took possession of the island in 

 the Russian name and that of his craft. 



His secret could not long be kept. He had left some of his men 

 behind him to hold the island, and when he returned to Unalaska 

 they were gone. And when the next season had fairly opened a 

 dozen vessels were watching him and trimming in his wake. Of 

 course they all found the island, and in that year, July, 1787, the 

 sailors of Pribilof, on St. George, while climbing the bluffs and strain- 

 ing their eyes for a relief ship, descried the low coast and scattered 

 cones of St. Paul, 36 miles to the northwest of them. When they 

 landed at St. George not a sign nor a vestige of human habitation 

 was found thereon ; but during the succeeding year, when they crossed 

 over to St. Paul and took possession of it, in turn, they were surprised 

 at finding on the south coast of that island, at a jDoint now known as 

 English Bay, the remains of a recent fire. There were charred embers 

 of driftwood and places where grass had been scorched ; there was a 

 pipe, and a brass knife handle, which I regret to say have long passed 

 beyond the cognizance of any ethnologist. This much appears in the 

 Russian records. 



^ This legend is translated, by the author, and published in the Appendix. 



