4 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



dropped, and thus this luckless voyage of Alaskan discovery came 

 to an end. 



Bering died here, on one of the Commander Islands,* where he 

 had been wrecked as above related ; the survivors, forty-five souls 

 in number, lived through the winter on the flesh of sea-lions, the 

 sea-cow,f or manatee, and thus saved their scanty stock of flour ; 

 they managed to build a little shallop out of the remains of the 

 St. Peter, in which they left Bering Island departed from this 

 scene of a most extraordinary shipwreck and deliverance on 

 August 16, 1742, and soon reached Petropaulovsky in safety the 

 27th following. In addition to an authentic knowledge of the 

 location of a great land to the eastward, the survivors carried from 

 their camp at Bering Island a large number of valuable sea-otter, 

 blue-fox, and other peltries, which stimulated, as no other induce- 

 ment could have done, the prompt fitting out and venture of many 

 new expeditions for the freshly discovered land and islands of 

 Alaska. 



So, in 1745, Michael Novidiskov first, of all white men, pushed 

 over in a rude open wooden shallop from Kamchatka, and landed 

 on Attoo, that extreme western islet of the great Aleutain chain 

 which forms upon the map a remarkable southern wall to the 

 green waters of Bering Sea. No object of geographical search was 

 in this hardy fur-hunter's mind as he perilled his life in that 

 adventure far from it ; he was after the precious pelage of the 



* Bering's Island he was wrecked on the east coast, at a point under steep 

 bluffs now known as " Kommandor." Scarcely a vestige of this shipwreck 

 now remains there. 



f That curious creature is extinct. It formerly inhabited the sea-shores 

 of these two small islands. The German naturalist Steller, who was the sur- 

 geon of Bering's ship, has given us the only account we have of this animal's 

 appearance and habits; it was the largest of all the Sirenians ^attained a length 

 sometimes of thirty feet. When first discovered it was extremely abundant, 

 and formed the main source of food-supply for the shipwrecked crew of Be- 

 ring's vessel. Twenty-seven years afterward it became extinct, due to the 

 merciless hunting and slaughter of it by the Russians, who, on their way over 

 to Alaska from Kamchatka, always made it an object to stop at Bering or Cop- 

 per Island and fill up large casks with the flesh of this sea-cow. Its large size, 

 inactive habits, and clumsy progress in the water, together with its utter fear- 

 lessness of man, made its extinction rapid and feasible. 



I make the restoration from a careful study of the details of Steller's 

 description. 



