244 LETTER TO GMELIN 



day after our departure, have found the islands in the Channel ^ 

 between Kamchatka and America, which is not over forty miles 

 due east of the mouth of the Kamchatka River. But as the 

 exalted spirit of the navigators would not listen to reason and 

 they first wanted to locate Company Land and wanted to find 

 America outside of the Channel, we found it, to be sure, but five 

 hundred Dutch miles from Avacha, whence we had sailed, in 

 latitude 59°, after having roamed about the sea for over seven 

 weeks and run all the time under and along the land. On a 

 northerly course any day within twenty-four hours we could have 

 reached land, which I constantly suspected from innumerable 

 signs at sea and [which procedure] was repeatedly but in vain sug- 

 gested by me as well as others. I was not a little astonished at the 

 behavior of the Captain Commander, who was ever eager to go 

 home but allowed neither me nor any one else to do anything 

 worth while. What I did, I did alone at the risk of my life and 

 without any assistance, although this constituted the most im- 

 portant part of their discoveries, for which, into the bargain, they 

 wanted to deny me the credit and which they wanted to claim 

 for themselves. 



Especially is it worthy of note how we lived and sustained 

 ourselves through the winter on the island on which we were 

 wrecked, how we built a vessel in the spring and were delivered 

 from the island. The island is twenty miles from the mouth of 

 the Kamchatka River and sixty from the port of Avacha. With 

 Mr. Plenisner^ I built the first hut, [making use] of driftwood for 

 lack of forests, established a colony, and placed all of us on an 

 orderly footing; this was copied by the others, and in this manner 

 forty-six^ of us spent the winter in five huts. We lived on sea 



5 See, above, p. 73, footnote 149, and Fig. 14. 



6 Plenisner in the baggage allotment list (Vol. i, p. 235) is listed as 

 "Corporal of Okhotsk Harbor." Steller (above, p. 21) calls him sur- 

 veyor. He was a compatriot of Steller's (see above, p. 148, footnote 337) 

 and seems to have accompanied him on most of his hunting and exploring 

 expeditions. 



' The list of survivors as given in Khitrov's version of the log book 

 (Vol. I, p. 235) contains forty- five names. 



