THE VARIOUS EXPEDITIONS. 181 



himself on these points, although it was nearly six 

 months before he definitely ascertained that the place 

 was an island. Unlike Kamchatka, the country was 

 treeless, having only a few trailing willows of the 

 thickness of a finger. The animals of the coast were 

 entirely new and strange, even to him, and showed 

 no fear whatever. They had no sooner left the ship, 

 Avhen they saw sea-otters, which they first supposed 

 to be bears or gluttons. Arctic foxes flocked about 

 them in such numbers that they could strike down 

 three or four score of them in a couple of hours. 

 The most valuable fur-bearing animals stared at them 

 curiously, and along the coast Steller saw with won- 

 derment whole herds of sea-cows grazing on the luxu- 

 riant algTe of the strand. Not only he had never seen 

 this animal before, but even his Kamchatkan Cossack 

 did not know it. From this fact, Steller concluded 

 that the island must be uninhabited. As the trend 

 of Kamchatka was not the same as that of the island, 

 and as the flora was nevertheless identical, and as he 

 moreover found a window frame of Russian workman- 

 ship that had been washed ashore, he was convinced 

 that the country must be a hitherto unknown island 

 in the vicinity of Kamchatka. 



Bering shared this view, but the other officers still 

 clung to their illusions, and when Waxel, on the even- 

 ing of the 6th, came ashore, he even spoke of send- 

 ing a message for conveyance. Steller, on the other 

 hand, began to make preparations for the winter. In 

 the sand-banks, near an adjacent mountain stream, he 

 and his companions dug a pit and made a roof of 



