190 ALASKA INDUSTEIES. 



interred him near the spot, and the island is his monument, and also 

 the imperishable record of his singular end. 



Steller says that those who survived were those who resisted the 

 desire to take to their beds, and whose natural flow of humor kept 

 them sanguine and cheerful. The officers who had to be on deck and 

 up at all hours looking after everything were never taken down seri- 

 ously, though they all were attacked by scurvy. Not long after Bering 

 died the St. Peter was wrecked by a fearful southeaster. Her cable 

 parted and she came ashore near by the Russian encampment during 

 the night of December 29. In the morning she was found buried 

 8 or 10 feet in the sand, completely shattered. This was a crushing 

 blow to the survivors — they had counted alone on getting back to 

 Petropavlovsky by her instrumentality. 



Escape of the survivors. — The survivors, 45 souls, lived through 

 the winter on the flesh of sea lions, the Rliyfina or manatee, and thus 

 saved their flour, etc. They managed to build a little shallop out of 

 the remains of the >S'/. Peter, in which they left this scene of the most 

 extraordinary shipwreck and deliverance in our annals, on the 16th of 

 August, 1742, and reached Petropavlovskj^ in safety on the 27th. 



The nerve and courage op Steller. — Steller here saw the fur 

 seal breeding first of all civilized men, in the waters north of the 

 equator, and here he made the earliest record of its existence as an 

 animal in the naturalist's lexicon. The rookery to and from wiiich he 

 used to journey in observation was nearly 9 miles from the camp, and 

 considering his physical condition — he was never a robust man — the 

 fatigue that his excursions must have engendered would have deterred 

 most men from making a second trii) to the " laasbustchie " of Bering 

 Island. 



As our intelligence and appreciation of these valuable interests of 

 natural science and of commerce peculiar to the Pribilof group of 

 Alaska and the Commander Islands of Russia increases, so do our 

 regard and esteem for Steller advance. Since he was the surgeon of 

 that ill-fated expedition, his duties in this direction must have con- 

 sumed nearly all of his time in the most imperative manner. What 

 he did do, therefore, in the line of natural history is still the more to 

 be commended. 



ST. MATTHEW ISLAND AND ITS RELATION TO ST. PAUL. 



Polar bears on the Pribilof group. — When the fur seals first 

 took possession of the P*ribilof group they undoubtedly found polar 

 bears thereon. At least I firmly believe that if the bears were not 

 about when they first arrived it was not due to the inability of these 

 creatures to get there in limited numbers, but rather to the fact that 

 nothing on the islands invited them or was as attractive as the field 

 to the north, for this animal can not endure with comfort a temper- 

 ature which even the fur seal will submit to. 



Provided with more walrus meat than he knew what to do with, the 

 polar bear, in my opinion, has never cared much for the seal islands; 

 but the natives have seen them here on St. Paul, and old men have 

 their bear stories which they tell to the rising generation. The last 

 "medvait" killed on St. Paul Island was shot at Boga Slov in 1848. 

 None have ever come down since and very few were there before, but 

 those few evidently originated at and made St. Matthew Island their 

 point of departure. Hence I desire to notice this hitherto unexplored 

 spot, standing as it does 200 miles to the northward of St. Paul, and 



