154 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



sent out to go into the country eastward and gather information. 

 For all hope had not yet been abandoned that this might be 

 Kamchatka and, since an error in the latitude might have been 

 made, perhaps the region about Olyutora,^^^ the large number of 

 foxes there also apparently lending probability to this view. 

 Others believed this to be Cape Kronotski, and, although the 

 error was easy to see, they loved to lull themselves into pleasant 

 dreams with such hopes. 



A number of persons died ashore at the very beginning. Among 

 them we were particularly grieved over the old and experienced 

 mate, Andreas Hesselberg,36o who had served at sea for more 

 than fifty years and at the age of seventy was discharging his 

 duties always in such a way that he carried to his grave the 

 reputation of a preeminently useful man, whose disregarded 

 advice might perhaps have saved us earlier.^^i Besides him 

 there died two grenadiers, one cannoneer, the master's servant, 

 one sailor, and finally, on December 8, Captain Commander 

 Bering passed away, from whom this island was afterwards 

 named. Two days after him his former adjutant, the master's 



under Dec. i in Vol. i, p. 230, and Yushin's journal, ibid., footnote 127, 

 last paragraph). 



«9 About 6o3^° N. on the east coast of Kamchatka (see Vol. i, PI. I; 

 there spelled "Olyutorsk"). Cape Kronotski is in about 55^* N. The 

 seemingly divergent directions in which this reconnaissance is stated to 

 have been undertaken — east by Steller and south by Yushin — do not 

 conflict, nor do the directions of the previous trip — west according to 

 Steller, and north according to Yushin — inasmuch as the shore of Bering 

 Island at the point where the St. Peter had stranded has a local trend of 

 east-west as compared with the predominant north-northwest trend of the 

 coast north of this point and the south trend south of it (see PI. II). (J) 



S60 Hesselberg died on November 22. On the spelling of his name see, 

 above, footnote 2>3y last paragraph. 



361 The passage "discharging . . . saved us earlier" in the published 

 version is much briefer than the original in the MS, which reads: "dis- 

 charging his duties as befits a faithful servant. Although he left behind 

 many upright people in the fleet who knew his worth and who had also 

 in part profited by it, he had nevertheless to suffer the misfortune now 

 to be treated as a silly child and idiot by men scarcely half his age and 



