164 SEA-COWS 
between Moreton Bay and Cape York, that a regular fishery 
was established at Moreton Bay. 
Tue Ruytina, or Arctic Ska-Cow, is of special interest 
to Americans because of the important part it played about 
the middle of the eighteenth century in the discovery of 
Alaska. In 1741 the Russian navigator, Captain Vitus 
Bering, was shipwrecked on Bering Island and compelled to 
winter there. The majority of the crew of the St. Peter died 
of hardship, and the remainder also. would have perished but 
for the presence of the great Arctic Sea-Cow, then seen for 
the first time. To George William Steller, the official natural- 
ist of the ill-fated expedition, the world owes all it ever will 
know of the life history of this animal. Despite the suffer- 
ings he endured, he faithfully and laboriously reduced to 
writing everything that he observed of the ponderous animal 
whose flesh sustained the lives of the castaways. 
The Rhytina was an animal closely resembling the dugong 
and manatee, but greatly exceeding the maximum size of 
either. Steller declared that “the full-grown animal weighs 
about 8,000 pounds,” and from the skeletons that were col- 
lected on Bering Island in 1883 by Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, 
and now on exhibition in the United States National Museum, 
we know that full-grown animals attained a length of between 
20 and 30 feet. 
This species was exterminated by whalers who sought it 
for food, aided by the natives who used both its flesh and 
skin. It was practically exterminated about 1780, but the 
last animal was not killed until 1854. (Nordenskiold’s “‘ Voy- 
age of the Vega.’’) 
