lOO STELLER'S JOURNAL 



and in what direction the voyage ought to be undertaken, and 

 brought all this before the Captain Commander, my numerous 

 efforts were considered unworthy even of being laid before the 

 other ofhcers in council, the whole supreme judgment amount- 

 ing to this: "People talk much; who would believe a cossack? 

 I place no confidence whatever in it." — Now, however, this in- 

 formation is corroborated by these gentlemen's own journals 

 and charts, and many have even died and are buried in conse- 

 quence [of this disregard]. One might perhaps even get the 

 notion that the chart of the First Expedition is still less trust- 

 worthy, since it has forgotten the islands along Kamchatka 

 opposite Olyutora, likewise the fine harbors at the Avacha, 

 before Avacha at the Uka and Olyutora, 222 and since according 

 to its indication no land was found within thirty miles of Kam- 

 chatka, although Bering's Island is distant only twenty miles 

 directly to the east of it.223 



for which Steller adduces four reasons: (i) the outline of the Kamchat- 

 kan and American coasts, which indicate violent separation; (2) the nu- 

 merous capes which project as much as 30 to 60 versts into the sea; (3) the 

 numerous islands in the sea between Kamchatka and America; (4) the 

 situation of the islands and the small extent of this sea. (G) 



222 Although this passage is obscure, possibly owing to repetition of 

 words and other errors by the copyist, the meaning may be that the chart 

 of the first expedition (Vol. i. Fig. 5) failed to show the harbors on the 

 Avacha and Uka coasts (in the sense defined by Krasheninnikov, op. cit.. 

 Vol. I, pp. 238-239, of the coasts around Avacha Bay and north of the 

 Kamchatka River, respectively). The reference to islands opposite the 

 Olyutora coast is not clear, as there are none in this location. (J) 



223 The MS has in addition: "and the mainland forty miles." The 

 reference is to the attempt Bering made in the summer of 1729 to find 

 land east of Kamchatka, the year after his main voyage to Bering Strait 

 (see Vol. I, p. 20, and map. Fig. 6). Bering sailed from the mouth of the 

 Kamchatka River on June 5 and, according to Berkh's abstract of the 

 midshipman Peter Chaplin's log book (Berkh, pp. 72-73, Ball's transla- 

 tion, p. 769; for references see bibliography in Vol. i, pp. 363-364 and 366- 

 367 respectively), sailed 114 nautical miles on an E by S course before 

 abandoning the search on June 9. This distance and the position in lati- 

 tude and longitude by reckoning as given in Chaplin's log book would 

 place the vessel not far from the northern end of Bering Island. It is one 

 of the ironies of fate that Bering did not see the island, as a knowledge of 



