UNITED STATES COAST AND GEODETIC SUEVEY. 773 



country. There is no name of draughtsman or place or date of making. The geographical part 

 has been made with an ink which has turned brown with age. The ornamental escutcheon was 

 drawn by a different hand in another kind of ink which has retained its color. 



There are two manuscript maps in the Royal archives of Sweden of this general character, 

 which have been briefly noticed by E. Dahlgren.* They are more elegantly and profusely orna- 

 mented aud differ slightly in names, and one has a number of soundings between St. Lawrence 

 Island and the Diomede Islands. They are of the same size and doubtless were made at the same 

 time as the Klinckofstrom chart, but, being intended for an exalted personage, were more highly 

 ornamented. 



The geographical peculiarities of this, as compared with other charts of the first voyage of 

 Bering, are discussed in the National Geographic Magazine (Vol. ii, No. 2, 1890) as previously 

 mentioned, aud to that paper is referred the reader who desires fuller and more technical details. 



It is only just to call attention to the liberality of Baron Klinckofstrom in permitting this val- 

 uable relic to go beyond the seas for the information and accommodation of American students of 

 geography, and to express for this courtesy our sincere gratitude. 



NOTES ON THE ORIGINAL CHART BY WAXEL OP THE VOYAGE OF BERING IN 1741. 



[Illustration No. 70.] 



Lieut. Sven Waxel, executive officer of Bering's vessel, was a Swede in the Russian service. 

 In June, 1741, he sailed from Avacha Bay in the ship St. Peter. Later on in the voyage, as the 

 scurvy with which they were scourged reduced the commander, Bering, to such a state that he was 

 obliged to take to his bed, Waxel practically commanded the vessel. After their return from the 

 island named after Bering, who died and was buried upon it, Waxel was senior officer, and when 

 the forces of the expedition were gathered at Tomsk in Siberia, where they remained until 1745, 

 according to Lauridsen, Waxel for a time was in general command. 



The manuscript chart, of which the accompanying outline is a facsimile, is supposed to have 

 been made for Waxel's own use by some draughtsman under his supervision, or from his own notes, 

 so that it represents what were to him the geographical results of the voyage of the St. Peter. 

 The results obtained by Chirikoff on the St. Paul, which early in the voyage became separated 

 from the St. Peter, were of course different, and to some extent discrepant. The attempt to combine 

 these two discrepant charts has made the charts of Miiller and others much more confused and 

 confusing than either of the originals would have been separately. 



The opportunity of examining this valuable historical relic is due to the liberality of the 

 authorities of the University of Upsala, Sweden, of whose library it forms a part. 



By reproducing it we place in the hands of students another original document which hitherto 

 has been inaccessible, and the data of which were available only to such as were acquainted with 

 the Russian language. 



Apart from its geographical interest, which will be considered presently, this chart has another 

 interest. It is well known to naturalists and those familiar with Alaskan history that the crew 

 of Bering's vessel discovered on Bering Island, or living about its shores, an enormous species of 

 manati or sea cow, which afforded excellent meat, and which was so hunted for food within a few 

 years afterward that it soon became extinct, and is now known only by some more or less imperfect 

 skeletons and a dried fragment of its hide. This animal was described by Steller and is known 

 as Steller's sea cow (Bhytina stelleri or gigas). It had a very thick rough skin marked by deep 

 folds which enabled it to bend itself with more facility, and its posterior flippers were shaped 

 like the tail of a whale, more or less forked. Steller made a drawing of it which is known only by 

 a copy, the original being lost, and the form of the tail has been in dispute owing to an alleged 

 ambiguity in the original description, and the fact that some of the other sea cows have a rounded 

 tail and not a forked one. In the absence of Steller's original drawing of the northern sea cow, 

 the sketch on this manuscript is probably the only existing protrait of that animal which was ever 



•Yrner, for 1884, p. 93. 



