The Days of a Man ^897 



"MADE IN GERMANY." Certain foods, too, are im- 

 ported, the good thick soup served by the agent in 

 charge coming from Chicago, where it is prepared 

 to suit the Russian taste. But the deep pies of 

 red salmon and the entrees of roasted teal ducks, 

 flanked by blueberries and molinos, were native 

 products. 



The fields about Nikolski blossomed with summer 

 flowers yellow anemones, blue Siberian iris, Ice- 

 land poppies, white chrysanthemums, and other 

 specialties of the North. Reindeer, introduced from 

 Siberia, are numerous but distressingly wild, always 

 retreating to the next ridge beyond the observer. 



The Komandorski Fur Seal was the first made 

 known to science, the notes of Georg Wilhelm 

 Steller, surgeon-naturalist of "Commander" Bering's 

 voyage of 1741, having been printed by Pallas in 

 Bering's i8n though not distributed until 1831. At the 

 sout h ern en d of Bering Island is Tolstoi Mys or 

 Cape, a black headland of lava, near which the 

 St. Peter, Bering's vessel, was wrecked on the re- 

 turn from St. Elias, and where his crew spent the 

 winter and the Commander himself, a very large 

 man, fell ill unto death. Steller then officially 

 condemned the wrecked vessel, building from it a 

 small boat in which he and the other survivors 

 reached Petropaulski on the mainland. Of Bering's 

 end Steller wrote as follows: 



He was (as it were) buried alive; the sand kept constantly 

 rolling down upon him from the sides of the pit and covered his 

 feet. At first this was removed, but finally he asked that it 

 might remain, as it, furnished him a little of the warmth he sorely 

 needed. Soon half his body was under the sand and his com- 

 rades had to dig him out to give him a decent burial. 



C 590 3 



