LANDFALL: ADAK AND ATKA LSLANDS 113 



but, because we were too near and too far north and also because 

 with the southwest wind we were going straight towards land 

 without being able to pass to the south of it, we turned hurriedly 

 towards the east back to sea. This would not have been necessary 

 if we had let ourselves be warned by the signs of land, known so 

 long and so often called to mind, and gone farther south. But 

 even this very morning Khitrov's unlucky proposition to go still 

 farther north, because he thought that the land extended straight 

 west in latitude 56°, and imagined that he was already in the 

 Channel, 2" came near being approved. — It was most fortunate 

 that we caught sight of the land while yet day and before the 

 storm came up which did shortly afterwards, for otherwise we 

 should certainly have run onto it in the night, or else, in spite of 

 ourselves and without any means of escape, should have been 

 driven by the southeast wind and been wrecked on it. In the 

 excitement it was incidentally hinted at among the officers that 

 this was surely the place where we had parted from Captain 



of the expedition was that they were still skirting the mainland of America 

 and that the islands which they recognized as such were offshore islands. 

 This conception is reflected in two maps by the officers themselves show- 

 ing the results of the expedition, one showing Bering's and Chirikov's 

 tracks according to their own calculations, published by Sokolov in 

 Zapiski Hydrogr. Depart., Vol. 9, St. Petersburg, 1851 (copied by Laurid- 

 sen in his "Vitus Bering"), and the other by Lieutenant Waxel, published 

 by Dall as PI. 70 in Appendix No. 19, U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey 

 Rept. for i8qo (for references see bibliography in Vol. i, pp. 365, 366, 

 and 366-367; see also, below, title of Fig. 29), On both maps the main- 

 land is shown to extend west about as far as this point (see also, above. 

 Fig. 14). 



Although, as stated in Vol. i, p. 338, no name is recorded in the log 

 book to have been given to this land, Miiller (Sammlung Russischer 

 Geschichte, Vol. 3, 1758, p. 223) says that one of the highest mountains 

 was named Mt. St. John as it was the church day of the conception of 

 John the Baptist. Davidson (Tracks and Landfalls of Bering and 

 Chirikof, 1901, p. 40) repeats this statement and seems, on his accom- 

 panying map and in the text, to identify Korovin Volcano, 4852 feet 

 high, as Mt. St. John (Great Sitkin volcano is 5033 feet). The name, 

 in the form of "The Mountain of St. John", also occurs on the map by 

 Waxel just referred to. (J) 



261 See, above, footnote 149. 



