NARROW ESCAPES 173 



fourth with much booty and good news to our people, who were 

 already fearing that we would never appear again. The cave, as 

 well as the bay, was afterwards named for me."^ At our first 

 entrance into this cave we found many foxes in it; they retreated 

 into a crevice in the rock through which afterwards the smoke 

 passed from the fire we made so that there started among them 

 such a sneezing and spitting that we had enough to laugh at. 

 At night, however, they gave us no rest, as they pulled off the 

 cap first of one and then of another and performed other tricks. "^ 



A few days before us the assistant navigator Yushin had gone 

 hunting with our only ship's carpenter, who had undertaken to 

 build alone a new vessel from the wreck and on whom conse- 

 quently rested all hope of our delivery, and three other persons. 

 When they, too, were forced by a storm to seek a crevice for 

 shelter and found one close to the water, it happened that they 

 were kept imprisoned there by the high tide for seven days, with- 

 out provisions and wood, and only returned on the ninth day, 

 at which time we had believed them either drowned or crushed 

 to death by snow dashing down from the mountains. 



When we came home on April 8 we were greeted by the glad 

 news that this person, ^^^ so indispensable to us, had made his 

 appearance again, and furthermore that the boatswain ^^^ had 

 come back on April 6 with the information that we were really 

 on an island and that they thought they had seen high mountains 

 in the northeast. According to the latitude in which we were, I 

 am of the opinion that these must not be regarded as a part of 

 America but as another island* unknown in Kamchatka."^ 



"■» The MS has in addition: "as it was discovered on my trip." 

 The location of this cave cannot be indicated with certainty. It may have 

 been near Dikaya Bay (PL II; see below, p. 197, footnote 35) southeast 

 of the mouth of the transverse depression. (S) 



^15 The last two sentences are not in the MS. 



«6 The MS has the plural, "these persons. ..." 



*" Alexei Ivanov, who had left on March 22 (see the journal, p. 169. 

 above) . 



* Indeed, subsequent events have shown in this case also that Steller's 

 surmise was correct. For these mountains, seen from Bering Island in 



