32 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



twenty miles from shore to shore, a distance it can cover com- 

 fortably in thirty-six hours without suffering from hunger." 



Moreover, at different times, we saw sitting on the water large 

 flocks of gulls which, particularly in June, always keep close to 

 the coast where the fishes approach the land and ascend the 

 streams from the sea in the greatest number and thus afford 

 them the most abundant food supply. We saw these gulls always 

 fly in a northerly or northwesterly direction until lost to our 

 view. How easy and necessary would it not have been to have 

 convinced oneself of the correctness or incorrectness of such an 

 obvious supposition as to the nearness of land by sailing a 

 few hours in a northerly direction, especially since the constant 

 fogs did not permit a view of more than a few miles, while the 

 winds on the outward trip were so fair that we could not have 

 wished them better for the accomplishment of a great venture. 



I pass over several circumstances which gave enough occasion 

 for conjecture. But while other navigators on expeditions of 

 discovery, such as one reads of in accounts of travels, paid atten- 

 tion to all details and tried to profit by them, in our case on the 

 contrary the biggest and plainest signs and most evident reasons 

 were disregarded and made light of. As a result of this state of 

 aff^airs we reached land six weeks after leaving Avacha, whereas 

 if we had sailed on a northeast course we might have made it in 

 three or four days, or in ten days at the most if we had followed 

 the course originally agreed on, provided the above-mentioned 

 signs and indications of the nearness of land had been taken 



" The southern Kurile Islands were so little known that Steller was 

 not aware of the fact that the sea otter at that time was quite common 

 as far south as Yezo, or latitude 45°. Nor can he be blamed for believing 

 that it was the same animal which Marggraf (1610-1644) had described 

 from Brazil. The whole argument is therefore more or less futile. As a 

 matter of fact, the sea otter {Lalax luiris (Linn.)) is a North Pacific 

 species which in Steller's time occurred all the way from Lower Cali- 

 fornia north along the coast to the Aleutian chain and thence westward 

 to Kamchatka and south to Japan. The greatest gap in the distribution 

 of the sea otter was the stretch of open ocean between Copper Island and 

 Attu, the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands proper, approximately 

 185 statute miles. (S) 



