44 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



tunity to accomplish as much as possible with the greatest 

 possible dispatch. I struck out in the direction of the mainland 

 in the hopes of finding human beings and habitations. I had not 

 gone more than a verst along the beach before I ran across signs 

 of people and their doings. Under a tree I found an old piece of 

 a log hollowed out in the shape of a trough, in which, a couple 

 of hours before, the savages, for lack of pots and vessels, had 

 cooked their meat by means of red-hot stones,''^ just as the Kam- 

 chadals did formerly.^* The bones, some of them with bits of 

 meat and showing signs of having been roasted at the fire, were 

 scattered about where the eaters had been sitting. I could see 

 plainly that these bones belonged to no sea animal, but to a land 

 animal, and I thought myself justified in regarding them as 

 reindeer bones, ^^ though no such animal was observed on the 

 island but was probably brought there from the mainland. 

 There w^ere also strewn about the remains of yukola, or pieces 

 of dried fish, which, as in Kamchatka, has to serve the purpose of 

 bread at all meals. There were also great numbers of very large 

 scallops ^^ over eight inches across, also blue mussels similar to 

 those found in Kamchatka and, no doubt, eaten raw as the cus- 

 tom is there. In various shells, as on dishes, I found sweet grass* 



^< There are of course no signs of the fireplace now, especially as the 

 shore at this point is being constantly undermined by wave action. (S) 



^5 Thus in the published version — "nach vormaliger Kamtschadal- 

 ischer Art." The MS has "nach anderwerts beschriebener Kamtschat- 

 kischer Art," "just like the Kamchadals, as described elsewhere." The 

 reference is to Steller's " Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka," 

 still in manuscript only when he wrote these words and not published 

 until 1774. 



^6 Steller was probably correct in identifying the bones found as those 

 of reindeer, or caribou. The region is a typical caribou country. The 

 species is probably Rangifer stonei Allen, originally described from the 

 Kenai Peninsula. (S) 



" " Jacobsmuscheln," Jacob's mussel, a scallop {Peclen caurinus 

 Gould). The blue mussel mentioned immediately after is Mytilus 

 californianus Conrad. The true "Jacob's mussel " is Pecten jacobaeus. (S) 



* Sladkaya trava [sweet grass in Russian] are the peeled stalks exuding 

 a sugary substance in drying. — P. [See the next footnote, second para- 

 graph.] 



