184 VITUS BERING. 



clear ashore and its keel buried deep in the sand, did 

 their condition seem more secure. They then went 

 quietly to work to prepare for the winter. 



In December the whole crew was lodged in five under- 

 ground huts (dug-outs) on the bank of the stream near 

 the place of landing. * The ship's provisions were divided 

 in such a way that every man daily received a pound of 

 flour and some groats, until the supply was exhausted. 

 But they had to depend principally upon the chase, and 

 subsisted almost exclusively upon the above mentioned 

 marine animals and a stranded whale. Each hut consti- 

 tuted a family with its own economical affairs, and daily 



* These pits or earth huts lay in a direction from north to south. Next 

 to Steller's hut was the miserable pit in which Vitus Bering, a hundred 

 and forty-eight years ago, drew his last breath. August 30, 1882, Dr. Stej- 

 neger visited this place, of which he gives the following description in 

 Deutsche Geographische BUitter, 1885, pp. 265-6: "I was first attracted to the 

 ruins of the huts in which the shipwrecked crew passed a winter a hun- 

 dred and forty-one years previous. On a projecting edge of the western 

 slope of the mountain, in the northern corner of the valley, stands a large 

 Greek cross. Tradition says that Bering was buried there. The present 

 cross is of recent date. The old one, erected by the Russian Compan}', 

 was shattered by a storm, but the stump may still be seen. No one thought 

 of erecting a new one, until Hr. von Grebnitski attended to the matter. 

 Directly southeast of the cross, close to the edge of a steep declivity, 

 about twenty feet high, lie the fairly well preserved ruins of the house. 

 The walls are of peat, about three feet high and three feet thick. They 

 were covered with a very luxuriant growth of grass, and, moreover, swarms 

 of mosquitoes helped make investigation very unpleasant work. * * * 

 The floor was covered with a thick turf, the removal of which was out of 

 the question. I probed the whole surface with a bayonet, but nothing of 

 significance was found. * * * ^ part of the crew were undoubtedly 

 lodged in the sandpits under the barrow, of which Steller speaks. And in 

 fact traces of the pits still exist, although they no longer have any defi- 

 nite form, being, moreover, so overgrown with vegetation that nothing 

 could be ascertained from them. Some Arctic foxes had burrowed there. 

 At our approach the whole brood came out, and in close proximity stood 

 curiously gazing at us. Steller and his companions are gone, but the 

 Arctic fox, which played them so many tricks, is still there. The pits, 

 now merely an irregular heap of sand filled with burrows, lie close to the 

 brook, where it curves sharply toward the west, cutting into the declivity 

 on which the house ^ioin^^.''''— Author's Note to American Edition. 



