10 
BULLETIN OE THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
with some degree of accuracy, hut not even Makarof in the Vitiaz seems to have been 
provided with an apparatus tit to take soundings deeper than 400 fathoms. The 
soundings Avhich he made in the passage alluded to, therefore, only prove that it is 
deeper than 400 fathoms, but how much we are unable to say. True, we find on the 
Eussian Hydrographic Department chart Ho. 1454 (Vost. Okeaii, Bering. Mor.) two 
definite soundings, viz, 390 fathoms in 53° 41' north latitude and 163° 29' east longi- 
tude, but this being station No. 109 of the Vitiaz, and therefore in all probability taken 
from its records, we And upon turning to the latter that bottoni was not found at 713 
meters, or 390 fathoms. The other sounding on the same chart is 400 fathoms in 54° 
45' north latitude and 162° 50' east longitude. By examining the records of the Vitiaz 
we find no soundings taken by that vessel in that latitude, biit we find on the other 
hand that station Eo. 113 was in 53° 45' north latitude and 162° 50' east longitude, 
and that a sounding was there taken with the result that bottom was not touched in 
732 meters, or 400 fathoms. The above figures are too close not to make it almost 
absolutely certain that by a clerical erroi’ the sounding in question was plotted a whole 
degree too far north and the dash with the dot over left out. 
In the chart of the western iiortion of Bering Sea which I have prepared and 
appended herewith (pi. 1), the 100-fathom curve around the Commander Islands is 
drawn for the first time with some pretensions to accuracy. Even in some recent 
publications it is asserted that the Commander Islands ‘‘belong to the Kamchatka 
system, Copper Island resting just within the 100-fathom curve from the Asiatic 
coast.” On the contrary, we know now that the sea between the mainland and the 
islands is over 400 fathoms deep. On my map they are connected with the peninsula 
of Kamchatka by the 500-fathom curve, but even that is only conjectural, though 
lirobable. The deep-sea soundings of the Albatross are here first shown on any map 
of the region, as well as the curves connecting them with the Tuscarora soundings of 
1874. It will thus be seen that nearly all our knowledge of the bottom in this part of 
the sea is due to ships belonging to the United States.^ 
The curves of the various depths from 100 fathoms down to 2,000 fathoms and 
over are, as a matter of necessity, highly conjectural. In the northeastern section of 
the map they appear even somewhat iiroblematical, in view of the fact that a series 
of shallow soundings running southwest from Cape Oliutorski, on the charts of the 
United States Hydrogra])hic Office, have been left out of consideration altogether. 
The reason is that the series is crossed by the deep soundings of the Albatross on her 
return iiassage from the Commander Islands in 1895 in such a manner that it is 
imiiossible to reconcile them. They may possibly belong farther west — a not unreason- 
able supposition, since the determination of the longitude of the various coasts and 
promontories in that part of the world is in such utter confusion ^ that a resurvey 
of the whole coast from Petropaulski to Providence, or Plover, Bay is imperatively 
demanded. 
1 1 find on Berglians’s “Chart of the World on Mercator’s Projection” a sounding of 2,700 fathoms 
indicated in (approx.) latitude 40' north and longitude 168° 20' east, the authority for which I am 
ignorant of. It is situated almost in a line between the 1895 Albatross soundings of 2,137 and 1,866 
fathoms, and if correct would indicate a depression below the general level of about 2,100 fathoms in 
that part of Bering Sea. 
Witness the fact that the various charts of the region for more than ten years have borne the 
following inscription; “The coast of Kamchatka north of Cape Koslof is reported to be charted 15 
miles too far east.” Yet nothing has been done to clear up the doubt. 
