1 80 STELLER'S JOURNAL 



we were almost without tools, ^^s T^g building of the new vessel 

 made equally good progress daily, and the eagerness to work rose 

 with hope, so that soon there was no doubt that we should be able 

 to start for Kamchatka in the month of August.^29 j^ order still 

 more to accelerate the work, a beginning was made to facilitate 

 the victualing of the crew by catching the sea cows in the neigh- 

 borhood, in order to have that much more time and help for 

 building the ship and in order to spare the men, who were already 

 pretty destitute of shoes and clothes, the hard road over the 

 mountains. ^30 fhis chase, so profitable to us, I have recounted in 

 detail in the description of Bering Island. *4" 



As the work thus could be advanced more and more ^^^ and as 

 *28 In the MS the last clause reads: "and the necessary tools for break- 

 ing up the ship were lacking." 



«9 The last clause in the MS after "with hope" is amplified as follows: 

 "As towards the end of the month of May all the frame timbers were 

 ready and set up on the keel, we began no longer to doubt that it would be 

 possible to leave here for Kamchatka in the month of August." 



430 The equivalent of this sentence is somewhat more detailed in the 

 MS, as follows: "Our only concern was how to obviate the difficult trans- 

 portation of the meat and obtain the food near home by catching the sea 

 cows which were daily present in great numbers before our eyes near the 

 shore. The work would thereby progress much faster in view of the fact 

 that the men were already lacking strength, shoes, and clothes, which 

 were being w'orn out very much on the extremely toilsome road south- 

 ward across the country and over the mountains." 



* See Part 4 of these Nordische Beytrdge. — P. [See the next footnote.] 



431 "Part 4" in Pallas' note is a typographical error for Part (or Vol.) 2, 

 published in 1781. The passage on hunting the sea cow is on pp. 290-292. 

 Pallas had transferred it from the MS, where it occurs at this point in 

 chronological order under May 21, and added it to the Description of 

 Bering Island. (The sentence "This chase . . . description of Bering 

 Island" is Pallas' and is therefore not in the MS.) Both in the MS and 

 in the published version {ibid., pp. 292-299) this passage is immediately 

 followed by an account of the natural history of the sea cow. In the 

 present work this passage and account are published in Appendix A 

 under the heading "The Sea Cow," pp. 226-237, below. 



"2 In the MS this clause reads: "As now all difficulties both in regard 

 to the breaking up of the vessel and the provisioning were solved and as, 

 in addition, we sometimes for a change got so many fishes in our half- 

 rotted fish nets that we were supplied for eight days from one haul." 



