8 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
crew, sick to death with the scurvy, slowly approached the southern extremity of 
Copper Island from the east, oii their return voyage, after having discovered the main- 
land of America. Owing to the universal sickness, the ship’s reckoning was entirely 
out, and the officers believed themselves off the coast of Kamchatka. The next day 
the vessel, over whicli the exhausted crew had hardly any control, drifted toward the 
east shore of Bering Island, and in the night following, a beautiful, still November 
night, of which this coast knows but few, the unfortunate craft came pretty near being 
left by the receding tide and wrecked on the projecting reefs at the southern entrance 
to the little bay called Komandor on the map (plate 4). By an exceptional piece of 
good luck, the breakers carried it safely over the rocks into the basin beyond, and a 
landing was effected. 
To such extremity were the discoverers reduced that it was decided to winter on 
this inhospitable shore. Hollows were dug in the ground for shelter and covered with 
skins of wild animals and sails. Many of the crew died of the scurvy, and on the 8th of 
December (old style) Bering himself. He was buried near the place marked on the 
map “Bering’s grave.” The others, 46 only out of 77, recovered slowly under the care 
of Gr. W. Steller, who accompanied the exj)editiou as a naturalist. The vessel was 
thrown up on the beach during a heavy gale in the night between November 28 and 
29 (old style), and all attempts to float it were in vain. The next spring, after a winter 
full of suffering and privations, the crew broke up the old vessel and of the materials 
built a smaller one, in which they landed at Petropaulski, Kamchatka, August 27, 1742. 
The present writer visited the place of the shii)wreck and the wintering August 
30, 1882, and has given an account of it, with a ground-plan of the hut and a sketch 
map of the locality, in Deutsche Geogr. Blatter, 1885, ijj). 265-266. A partial rendering 
of this is found in Prof. Julius Olsen’s translation of Lauridsen’s “Vitus Bering” 
(Chicago, S. G. Griggs & Co., 1889), ji. 184, and additional notes, pp. 214, 215. The 
relics of the expedition found by me are deposited in the United States National 
Museum. 
HYDROGRAPHIC NOTES. 
It is astonishing how very little is definitely known about the hydrography of 
the western side of Bering Sea. But few vessels fitted for such work have visited 
that part of the Avorld of late years, and those few have only made hurried passages 
through. In that AAmy a small amount of material has been accumulated, Avhich has 
been utilized by the Bussian admiral, S. O. Makarof, in his interesting work “ Vitiaz i 
Tikhi Okean” (2 volumes, St. Petersburg, 1894), in which, so far as the investigations 
relating to temxierature and specific gravity of the waters of the western Bering Sea 
are concerned, his own observations on board the corvette Vitiaz form the most 
valuable part. This being the case, I have no hesitation in presenting, in a brief 
abstract, the substance of those iiaragraphs in his book which refer to the matter in 
hand, especially since a full understanding of the phenomena in question is a necessary 
basis for an equally full understanding of the distribution of the food animals of the 
seals and of the seals themselves. 
On July 29, 1888, the Vitiaz left Petropaulski on a short trij) to the Commander 
Islands. The bathymetric observations in Bering Sea have shown that the bed of 
warm water of a tem])erature of + 9° C. is very thin near the coasts of Kamchatka. 
At a depth of 10 meters a temperature of -+- 2. 3° C. is found and at 25 meters only 
