268 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
his commission, so that a new St. Peter was launched on the 
^ August, 1742. The vessel was forty feet long, thirteen 
feet beam, and six and a half feet deep, and sailed as well 
as if built by an experienced master of his craft, but on the 
other hand leaked seriously in a high sea. The return voyage 
at all events passed successfully. On the Kamchatka 
was sighted, and two days after the St. Peter anchored at 
Petropaulovsk, where the shipwrecked men found a store¬ 
house with an abundant stock of provisions according to their 
ideas, which probably were not pitched very high. Next year 
they sailed on with their Behring-Island-built vessel to Okotsk. 
On their arrival there, of the seventy-six persons who originally 
took part in the expedition, thirty-two were dead. At Kam¬ 
chatka they had all been considered dead, and the effects they 
left behind them had been scattered and divided. Steller 
voluntarily remained some time longer in Kamchatka in order 
to carry on his researches in natural history. Unfortunately 
he drew upon himself the ill-will of the authorities, in consequence 
of the free way in which he criticised their abuses. This led 
to a trial at the court at Irkutsk. He was, indeed, found 
innocent, and obtained permission to travel home, but at Zoli- 
kamsk he was overtaken by an express with orders to bring 
him back to Irkutsk. On the way thither he met another 
express with renewed permission to travel to Europe. But the 
powers of the strong and formerly healthy man were exhausted 
by this hunting backwards and forwards across the immeasur¬ 
able deserts of Siberia. He died soon after, on the November, 
1746, at Tjumen, only thirty-seven years of age, ol a fever 
by which he was attacked during the journey.^ 
1 According to Muller’s official report, probably written for the purpose 
of refuting the rumours regarding Steller’s fate current in the scientific 
circles of Europe. According to the biography prefixed to Georg Wilhelm 
^ Beschreihung von dem Lande Kamtscliatl{a,lierausgegehen von J. 
B. S. (Scheerer), Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1774, Steller had in 1745 begun 
