68 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



stant signs of animals and drifting objects that we were still near 

 land and could expect it yet farther south; while at the same time 

 the adverse west wind was an indication of land ahead of us. 

 On the contrary, other and more favorable winds could with all 

 the more certainty be hoped for in latitudes 49° and 50° as there 

 is no instance of trade winds in such latitudes or outside the 

 tropics at all. However, although the Captain Commander 

 came to agree with me, nevertheless he would not issue any order 

 accordingly but merely talked about it and allowed his opinion 

 to be rejected without contradiction. ^^^ 



parallel of 53°, although it could certainly be assumed that land, since 

 it had been found in latitude 54°, might extend farther south, which 

 [plan] thus amounted to constantly sailing along the land and refusing 

 to avail oneself of the shortest way home at a distance away from the 

 land America." 



Steller's argument was that it would have been wiser to go south to 

 latitude 49° or 50° before turning west, as the land probably extended 

 farther south and the winds would at least not be persistent head winds 

 (it is in the sense of persistent and not of easterly winds that the subse- 

 quent reference in the journal to trade winds is to be understood). 



The likewise immediately subsequent reference to the west wind as 

 evidence of land ahead, as well as similar statements later in the journal 

 (passages to which refer footnotes 242 and 289), seem to indicate that 

 Steller believed that such a relation existed. What was the basis of this 

 belief is, according to Professor R. DeC. Ward of Harvard University, 

 to whom the question was submitted for comment, hard to say. The 

 prevailing winds of the region in summer are southwesterly and southerly, 

 and the generally westward course of the St. Peter would naturally cause 

 her to meet with land constantly because of the southward sweep of the 

 Aleutian Islands arc. Although this simple combination of existing 

 conditions accounts for the actual circumstances it is probable that 

 Steller's deduction was based on a conception of local winds commen- 

 surate with meteorological knowledge at the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century. Steller's view that northwestern North America approaches 

 Asia as a much larger and more compact land mass than is actually the 

 case (see, below, footnote 418) may have had something to do with his 

 deduction. (J) 



KsThe MS continues: "If I now draw the logical conclusion, from a 

 comparison between the object of the sea council and their subsequent 

 acts, it must certainly be as follows: 'These gentlemen want to go home, 

 and that by the shortest road but in the longest way.' " 



