78 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



less my proposition, most honestly made in order to preserve the 

 life of my fellow beings as well as my own/®^ ^ow fallen into 

 the power of others, was rejected from the old overbearing habit 

 of contradicting. — The answer was: "Why, what is the matter 

 with this water? The water is good, fill up with it!" Even 

 though in the meantime I had found a still nearer watering 

 place than the beloved salty puddle and proposed it in case the 

 spring water should not please, it should and must not be so, in 

 order that they might deny me all sense and all knowledge. 



As I was already accustomed to such treatment I paid no 

 more attention to it and began to reconnoiter the land. I 

 observed that the island on which we were was the largest of 

 eight lying round, about three or four German miles long and 

 about three or four versts broad from east to west. On the 

 north and west the mainland was visible at a distance of about 

 ten miles from it.* Yet it remains undecided whether the island 



163 In the MS this clause reads only "in order to preserve my own life 

 and health." 



* Steller according to his once preconceived opinion thought he saw 

 the mainland everywhere, where probably islands lying close together 

 or behind each other caused such an impression. — P. 



Steller, however, was right, for lo [German] miles, or 40 nautical miles, 

 back of him lay the mainland of the Alaska Peninsula. Even if this 

 land had not literally been the mainland, in principle his observation 

 was correct, for it was the main mass of land. In such matters the broader 

 conception will prove more fruitful. For example, in this very region, 

 Unimak Island (55° N. and 164° W,; see PI. I) is by strict definition an 

 island; but the fact that crustal forces have happened to cut it off from 

 the Alaska Peninsula by a narrow and insignificant strait makes it no 

 less a part of the land mass of the peninsula. Severance might just as 

 well have taken place farther east, at Port Moller, or been deferred, as 

 it were, to the major channel of Unimak Pass to the west. Indeed the 

 Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Island chain together should be 

 viewed as the submerged mountain arc that they are. From this stand- 

 point it is futile, as has been done, to contend that the Bering expedition 

 discovered little of the mainland of America. It remains that the expe- 

 dition was the first to outline the whole unknown coast of northwestern 

 North America throughout the great arc in which it sweeps, as mainland 

 around the Gulf of Alaska, and as islands in the Aleutian chain, from the 

 fiord coast of the Alaska Panhandle to the northeastern shores of Asia. (J) 



