CONTINUANCE OF WESTWARD VOYAGE 107 



to winter in Japan or America, although there was no particular 

 desire for either. 



On September 8 the weather was thick all day. The wind, 

 however, decreased and shifted so that in the forenoon it blew 

 west by north and in the afternoon west by south, for which 

 reason we gradually worked south with both winds and by 

 evening found ourselves on the parallel of Avacha, latitude 53°. 

 During the night the wind died down completely. 



Towards morning on September 9 we got a light wind from the 

 east, by the aid of which we made progress of a knot and a half 

 to two knots until eight o'clock. Thereafter it increased so that 

 towards ten o'clock we were driven forward at the rate of four 

 knots, or a mile an hour. During the morning it rained, and the 

 sky was overcast; in the afternoon, however, the horizon became 

 very clear, though without sunshine. According to the reckoning 

 kept it was believed that at 12 o'clock we were still 312 Dutch 

 miles distant from Avacha. ^^o 



On September 10 it rained in the morning, the sky being over- 

 cast. Nevertheless, towards noon the sun showed itself a little, 

 and later it cleared gradually on the horizon. The wind was at 

 first SSW, then SW b}' S. At noon the reckoning was 298 from 

 Avacha.241 It is marvelous that after such protracted and oft- 

 repeated experiences it was not yet understood that these 



240 The log book (Vol. i, p. 152) gives 316^ German (= Dutch) 

 miles. From this and other references it is clear that Steller uses the 

 astronomical day for the unit of calculation of the day's run, as he 

 naturally would inasmuch as he could only get these figures from the offi- 

 cers' records, who kept them in this manner. For his own record of hap- 

 penings, Steller, however, adhered to the civil day, as we have seen (foot- 

 note 131). 



The slight discrepancy often occurring between Steller's figure for a 

 given day's distance from Avacha and that in the log book seems to indi- 

 cate that he secured these data from some one other than Yushin, whose 

 version of the log book is followed for the greater part in Volume i of the 

 present work. However, even in one case in which he cites Yushin as the 

 source of his figures (p. 121) they do not tally with Yushin's figures as 

 given in the log book (footnote 274). 



241 The log book (Vol. i, p. 153) gives 301}^ miles. 



