THE FUR-SEAL ISLANDS OF ALASKA. 115 



limbs entirely with it; those who attended him cleared it away at first, but finally he would not suffer them to do so, 

 and showed impotent anger while they made the attempt; when he died at last, just 30 days alter being brought 

 ashore, he .was almost buried by his own hands in the sandy bed of his death; they 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 seriously, 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 fret 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-h'ons, the 

 Kltytina or Manatee, and thus saved their flour, etc.; they managed to build a little shallop out of the remains of 

 the "St. 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 Petropavlovsky in safety on the 27th. 



THE NERVE AND COURAGE OF 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 

 naturanst's lexicon ; the rookery to and from which he used to journey in observation was nearly nine 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 trip to the "laasbustchie" of Bering island. 



As our intelligence and appreciation of these valuable interests of natural science, and of commerce peculiar 

 to the Pribylov group of Alaska and the Commander islands of Russia, increases, so does our regard and esteem 

 for Steller advance; since he was the surgeon of that ill-fated expedition, his duties in this direction must have 

 consumed 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. 



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



POLAR BEARS ON THE PRIBYLOV GROUP. When the fur-seals first took possession of the Pribylov 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 cannot 

 endure with comfort a temperature 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 can?d 

 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 which, until Lieutenant Maynard and myself, in 

 1874, surveyed and walked over its entire coast-line, had not been trodden by white men or by natives, since that 

 dismal record made by a party of five Russians and seven Aleuts, who passed the winter of 1810-'ll on it; and who 

 were so stricken down with scurvy as to cause the death of all the Russians save one, while the rest barely recovered, 

 and left early the following year. We found the ruins of the huts, which had been occupied by this unfortunate and 

 discomfited party of fur-hunters, who were landed there to secure polar bears hi the depth of winter, when such 

 ursine coats should be the finest. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF ST. MATTHEW ISLAND. St. Matthew island is a queer, jagged, straggling reach of bluffs 

 and headlands, connected by bars and low-land spits; the former, seen at a little distance out at sea, resemble half 

 a dozen distinct islands; the extreme length is twenty-two miles, and it is exceedingly narrow in proportion. Hall 

 island is a small one that lies west from it, separated from it by a strait (Sarichev) less than three miles in width ; 

 while the only other outlying land is a sharp, jagged pinnacle rock, rearing itself over 1,000 feet abruptly from the 

 sea, standing five miles south of Sugar- Loaf cone, on the main island. From the cleft and blackened fissure near 

 the summit of this serrated pinnacle rock, volcanic fire and puffs of black smoke have been recorded as issuing. 



Our first landing, early in the morning of August 5, was at the slope of Cub hill, near cape Upright, the 

 easternmost point of the island. The air coming out from the northwest was cold and chilly, and snow and ice were 

 on the hill-sides and in the gullies; the sloping sides and summits of the hills were of a grayish, russet tinge, with 

 deep green swale flats running down into the low lands, which are there more intensely green and warmer in 

 tone. The pebble bar, formed by the sea between cape Upright and Waterfall head, is covered with a deep 

 stratum of glacial drift, carried down from the flanks of Polar and Cub hills, and extending over two miles of this 

 water-front to the westward, where it is met by a similar washing from that quarter. Back and in the center of 

 this neck are several small lakes and lagoons without fish; but, emptying into them are a number of clear, lively 



