BEGINXINCx OF VOYAGE 23 



not as a rule occur \ery far from the coast, inasmuch as the tide 

 always carries them back towards the land. We also saw gulls, 

 the large gulls {Diomedea exidans), and the ducks called rock 

 ducks in Kamchatka {Anas histrionica) ,'^^ all birds which are 

 never seen in the open sea or very far from land. From all these 

 [indications] it might be inferred that if the initial course were 

 continued still farther, land would be reached shortly. -^^ Just 

 at the time, however, when it was most necessary to apply reason 

 in order to attain the wished-for object, the erratic behavior of 

 the naval officers began. They commenced to ridicule sneer- 

 ingly and to leave unheeded every opinion offered by anybody 

 not a seaman, as if, with the rules of navigation, they had also 

 acquired all other science and logic. And at the time when a 

 single day — so many of which were afterwards spent in vain — 

 might have been decisive for the whole enterprise, the course 

 was suddenly changed to north. On this course for the first time 

 we experienced a slight storm, and our first misfortune occurred 

 when, owing to foggy and dark weather, the other ship, the 



40 The published version reads: "So sahe man auch Seemowen, die 

 grossen Mowen {Diomedea exulans) und auf Kamtschatka sogenannte 

 KHpp-Enten {Anas histrionica) ." In the MS, however, this reads: "So 

 sahe man auch Laros, Aernas Turneri und Enten kamenni utki." By 

 Laros Steller probably meant only gulls in general, but by Aernas 

 Turneri he certainly did not mean the albatrosses — "die grossen Mowen 

 {Diomedea exulans)." Pallas has here committed a most absurd blunder 

 in guessing what "Aernas Turneri" might mean, absurd because nobody, 

 and Steller last of all, would claim that the albatross is a bird which is 

 never seen in the open sea or very far from land. Aernas is plainly a 

 misreading for Sternas, the S being so joined to the t in the manuscript 

 as to have the appearance of A. Turner was the first author (in 1544) 

 to apply that word to a tern, and Sterna turneri a hundred years after 

 became a generic denomination for terns in general (see Alfred Newton: 

 A Dictionary of Birds, London, 1893-1896, p. 955, footnote 2). The 

 terns seen by Steller were probably Sterna paradisaea, which is known 

 both from Bering Island and several of the Aleutian Islands (Stejneger, 

 U. S. Natl. Museum Bull. 2q, 1885, pp. 85-86). " KHpp-ente," or rock 

 duck, is the harlequin duck {Histrionicus histrionicus) which is still 

 known to the natives of Bering Island as kamenushka (Stejneger, op. cit., 

 p. 168). (S) 



41 On this point, see the next footnote. 



