THE VAKIOUS EXPEDITIONS. 147 



the St. Peter's journal, coincide exactly with the journaFs 

 references to the island of St. Elias. Sauer says that the 

 island, from its most southerly point, extends in a north- 

 easterly direction (^Hrend north 46° east"), that it is 

 twelve English miles long and two and a half miles 

 wide, that west of the island^'s most northerly point there 

 is a smaller island (Wingham), with various islets nearer 

 the mainland, by which a well-protected harbor is formed 

 behind a bar, with about seven feet of water at ebb-tide, 

 — hence just at the place where Khitroff, as we have 

 already seen, found an available harbor for the St. Peter. 

 The journal, as well as Steller, describes St. Elias as 

 mountainous, especially in the southern part, thickly 

 covered with low, coniferous trees, and Waxel particularly 

 mentions the fact that off the coast of the island's 

 southern point, Bering's Cape St. Elias, there was a 

 single cliff in the sea, a *'kekur," which is also marked 

 on the map. Sarycheff and Sauer speak of Kayak Island 

 as mountainous and heavily timbered. Its southern 

 extremity rises above the rest of the island and ends very 

 abruptly in a naked, white, saddle-shaped mountain. A 

 solitary cliff of the same kind of rock, a pyramid-shaped 

 pillar (^'^kekur," ^' Abspringer") lies a few yards from 

 the point. Cook, too, in his fine outlines of Kayak 

 Island, puts this cliff directly south of the point. If we 

 then consider that the true dimensions of Bering's island 

 plainly point to Kayak, that his course along the new 

 coast is possible only on the same supposition that the 

 direction in which Bering from his anchorage saw Mt. 

 St. Elias exactly coincides with this mountain's position 

 with reference to Kayak, that the soundings given by him 



