192 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



the Russians preferred to look for the supposed winter resting- 

 places of the fur-seal, and forthwith a hundred schooners and shal- 

 lops sailed into storm and fog, to the northward occasionally, and 

 always 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. 



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

 unremitting search by hardy navigators, that the Pribylov Islands 

 were discovered. It seems that a rugged Muscovitic " stoorman," 

 or ship's " mate," Gerassim Pribylov by name, serving under the 

 direction and in the pay of one of the many companies engaged in 

 the fur-business at that time, was much moved and exercised in his 

 mind by the revelations of an old Aleutian shaman at Oonalashka, 

 who pretended to recite a legend of the natives, wherein he de- 

 clared that certain islands in Bering Sea had long been known to 

 the Aleutes. 



Pribylov* commanded a small sloop, the St. George, which 

 he employed for three successive years in constant, though fruit- 

 less, explorations to the northward of Oonalashka and Oonimak, 

 ranging over the whole of Bering Sea from the straits above. His 

 ill-success does not now seem strange as we understand the cur- 

 rents, the winds, and fogs of those waters. Why, only recently the 

 writer himself has been on one of the best-manned vessels that ever 



* Pribylov, the discoverer of the Seal Islands, was a native of " old Rus- 

 sia." His father was one of the surviving sailors of the St. Peter, which 

 was wrecked, with Bering in command, November 4, 1741, on Bering Island. 

 The only reference which I can find to him is the vague incidental expressions, 

 used here and there throughout an extended series of lengthy Russian letters 

 published by Techmainov, as illustrative of the condition of affairs in regard 

 to the Russian American Company. Pribylov was, when cruising in 1783-86 

 for the rumored seal-grounds, merely the first mate of the sloop St. George. 

 The captain and part owner was one M. Subov, who was a member of a trad- 

 ing' association then well organized in Alaska, and widely known as the ' ' Lay- 

 baidev Lastochin" Company. It does not appear that Pribylov took any part 

 in the business of sealing other than that of remaining in charge of the com- 

 pany's vessels. He died while in discharge of these duties at Sitka, March, 

 1796, on his ship The TJiree Saints. 



Pribylov himself called these islands of his discovery after Subov ; but 

 the Russians then, and soon after unanimously, indicated the group by its 

 present well-deserved title, " Ostrovie Pribylova." 



