174 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



Since, according to this, there seemed to be no other way to 

 get away from here and to reach Kamchatka, in default of any 

 forest, than to break up the old vessel and build a smaller one 



the northeast, were the now well-known Copper Island (Mednoi Ostrov). 

 — P. [On the incorrectness of this interpretation see the next footnote, 

 next-to-la^st paragraph.] 



418 In the MS this sentence has directly the opposite meaning. It 

 there reads: "And I was of the opinion, according to this latitude, that it 

 could be nothing else than the American mainland, seeing that this [i. e. 

 Bering Island] is an island of which nothing is known in Kamchatka." 



Clearly this, and not the published version, represents Steller's opinion. 

 It may be ascribed to the fact, previously referred to (asterisk footnote be- 

 tween 163 and 164, last paragraph, and footnote 260), that the general 

 conception of the members of the expedition was that, in what we now 

 know as the Aleutian Islands, they had been skirting the mainland coast 

 of North America. With Steller's correct inference, from the reports of 

 natives, of the nearness of Asia and America farther north (see the 

 journal, pp. 18 and 99 and footnote 221, above) he may well have 

 believed that the two continents approached closely in this region also 

 (see also the next-to-last sentence of footnote 149 for his conception on 

 the outward voyage, which nothing occurred on the return voyage to 

 change). That this was his belief seems to be confirmed by the 1758 map 

 of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (our Fig. 14), which embodied 

 the expedition's discoveries and conceptions. 



The underlying argument of the clause "seeing that Bering Island is an 

 island of which nothing is known in Kamchatka" may possibly be ex- 

 plained as follows: Even Bering Island, presumably close to Kamchatka, 

 is unknown there. All the more reason why a land beyond it would be 

 unknown. 



The report of land northeast of Bering Island had already been brought 

 back from Yushin's reconnaissance a month earlier (log book under March 

 8, Vol. I, p. 232, and third paragraph from bottom of p. 237). The fallacy 

 of this report has already been pointed out (in the same paragraph on p. 

 237). In extension of the statement there made it may be said that, even 

 allowing for the probable magnetic declination in that region at that time 

 (given in the log book as iM rhumb, or about 14°, E for a position ofif the 

 southern end of Bering Island six months later; see Vol. i, p. 244, "Varia- 

 tion of Compass"), Copper Island could not have been the basis of the 

 report, for it lies east and southeast of the southern end of Bering Island 

 and the position from which the land was reported to have been seen in 

 the northeast was, in the case of both Yushin and Ivanov, the northeast- 

 ern point of Bering Island, viz. Cape Waxel (see, above, footnote 393 and 



