FOOTNOTES:
[75] Note 57.
[76] Note 58.
[77] Note 59.
[78] Note 60.
[79] Bancroft, History of Alaska, p. 79, presents the same view: "The identity of Kayak is established by comparing Bering's with Cook's observations, which would be enough even if the chart appended to Khitroff's journal had not been preserved. At first both Cook and Vancouver thought it Yakutat Bay, which they named after Bering, but both changed their minds. As late as 1787 the Russian Admiralty college declared that the island Chukli (Montague of Vancouver) was the point of Bering's discovery, but Admiral Sarycheff, who examined the journals of the expedition, pointed at once to Kayak Island as the only point to which the description of Bering and Steller could apply. Sarycheff made one mistake in applying the name of Cape St. Elias to the nearest point of the mainland called Cape Suckling by Cook."—Tr.
[80] Note 61.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
EXPLORATIONS ALONG THE AMERICAN COAST.—STELLER'S CENSURE OF BERING FOR UNDUE HASTE.—BERING DEFENDED.—DALL, THE AMERICAN WRITER, REPRIMANDED.—THE RETURN VOYAGE.
It is by no means an easy matter to form an unbiased opinion of Bering's stay off Kayak Island. Steller is about our only authority, but just at the point where it is most difficult to supplement his account, he gives vent to most violent accusations against the management of the expedition from a scientific standpoint. On the 16th of July, when land was first seen, he says: "One can easily imagine how happy all were to see land. No one failed to congratulate Bering, as chief of the expedition, to whom above all others the honor of discovery belonged. Bering, however, heard all this, not only with great indifference, but, looking toward land, he even shrugged his shoulders in the presence of all on board." Steller adds that on account of this conduct charges might have been preferred against him in St. Petersburg, had he lived.
As Bering during the first few succeeding days did not make any preparations for a scientific exploration of the country, as he even tried, according to Steller's assurance, to dissuade the latter from making the island a visit, and as Steller only through a series of oaths and threats (for thus p. 30 must undoubtedly be interpreted) could obtain permission to make, without help or even a guard for protection, a short stay on the island, his anger grew to rage, which reached its culmination on the following morning when Bering suddenly gave orders that the St. Peter should leave the island. "The only reason for this," he says, "was stupid obstinacy, fear of a handful of natives, and pusillanimous homesickness. For ten years Bering had equipped himself for this great enterprise; the explorations lasted ten hours!" Elsewhere he says derisively that they had gone to the New World "simply to bring American water to Asia."
These accusations must seem very serious to every modern reader. Unfortunately for Bering, his second voyage is of interest principally from the standpoint of natural history. It is especially naturalists that have studied it. They are predisposed to uphold Steller. Hence his account threatens wholly to undermine Bering's reputation, and as a matter of course, W. H. Dall, in discussing this subject, finds opportunity to heap abuse upon Bering. He says: "On the 18th of July, Bering saw land. On the 20th he anchored under an island. Between two capes, which he called St. Elias and St. Hermogenes, was a bay where two boats were sent for water and to reconnoitre. * * * With characteristic imbecility, Bering resolved to put to sea again on the next day, the 21st of July. Sailing to the northward, the commander was confused among the various islands, and sailed hither and thither, occasionally landing, but making no explorations, and showing his total incapacity for the position he occupied. He took to his bed, and Lieutenant Waxel assumed charge of the vessel."[81]
This is not writing history. It is only a series of errors and incivilities. It was not the 18th of July that Bering first saw land. He did not sail north from Kayak, but southwest, and hence could not have lost his course among islands, for here there are no islands. Nor did he sail hither and thither, but kept the course that had been laid out, and charted the coasts he saw in this course. The most ridiculous part of this is what this nautical author tells of the bay between Cape St. Elias and Cape St. Hermogenes (Marmot Island off the coast of Kadiak Island), for these points are farther apart than Copenhagen and Bremen. If, according to this writer, Bering was unpardonably stupid, he must have been, on the other hand, astonishingly "far-sighted." After these statements it will surprise no one that this author considers illness a kind of crime, and blames a patient, sixty years of age, suffering with the scurvy, for taking to his bed! If Mr. Dall had taken the trouble to study the Bering literature to which he himself refers in his bibliography of Alaska, he would have been in a position to pass an independent opinion of the navigator, and would certainly have escaped making this series of stupid statements. His words now simply serve to show how difficult it is to eradicate prejudice, and how tenacious of life a false or biased judgment can be. Death prevented Bering from defending and explaining his conduct. No one has since that time sought to render him justice. I therefore consider it my duty—even if I should seem to be yielding to the biographer's besetting sin—to produce everything that can be said in Bering's defense.
In the first place, then, it must be remembered that on the 21st of July Bering had provisions left for no more than three months, and that these were not good and wholesome. His crew, and he himself, were already suffering from scurvy to such an extent that two weeks later one-third of them were on the sick-list. Furthermore, he was over fifty-six degrees of longitude from his nearest port of refuge, with a crew but little accustomed to the sea. The American coast in that latitude was not, according to Bering's judgment, nor is it according to our present knowledge, in any way a fit place to winter, and besides, he knew neither the sea nor its islands and depths, its currents and prevailing winds. All this could not but urge him to make no delay. And, in fact, Steller himself expressly says that it was a series of such considerations that determined Bering's conduct. "Pusillanimous homesickness" can scarcely have had any influence on a man who from his youth had roamed about in the world and lived half a generation in the wilds of Siberia. "The good Commander," thus Steller expresses himself, "was far superior to all the other officers in divining the future, and in the cabin he once said to myself and Mr. Plenisner: 'We think now that we have found everything, and many are pregnant with great expectations; but they do not consider where we have landed, how far we are from home, and what yet may befall us. Who knows but what we may meet trade winds that will prevent our return? We are unacquainted with the country, and are unprovided with provisions for wintering here.'"
It must be conceded that his position was one fraught with difficulties. At this point there are two things which Steller either has not correctly understood, or suppresses. According to his instructions, Bering was authorized to spend two years and make two voyages in the discovery of America, and to undertake another expedition afterwards with new preparations and equipments. And in his explanations to the crew he calls special attention to this point. Under these circumstances it would not have been right in him to assume any more risks than absolutely necessary. But here again the old opposition between Bering's nautico-geographical and Steller's physico-geographical interests breaks out. As a discoverer of the old school Bering's principal object was to determine some elementary geographical facts: namely, the distribution of land and water along the new coast, and hence he left Kayak Island, not to reach Avacha as soon as possible, but to follow the coast of the newly discovered country toward the west and north. All authorities agree on this point. It was illness and the Aliaska peninsula, projecting so far into the ocean as it does, that prevented him from sailing up toward latitude 65°, his real goal. Even Steller testifies to this, and although he repeats his former accusations against Bering, it does not signify anything, as he was excluded from the councils and was obliged to guess at what was adopted. His accusations are especially insignificant from the fact that he definitely contradicts himself on this point, for later on in his narrative he says that not until the 11th of August was it resolved, on account of the approaching autumn and the great distance from home, to start immediately on the return voyage to Kamchatka. That is to say, they had not then made a start. Until the 11th of August, for three weeks after their departure from Kayak, Bering pursued his task of nautical discovery along the new coast, and it would seem that he can be blamed for nothing more than considering this work of the expedition more important than that of the physico-geographical investigation which Steller represented. This was but natural. It was merely accidental that Steller accompanied Bering, and through him the expedition received a modern cast, which was not at all designed, and which Bering desired to make use of only under favorable circumstances. We may regret his haste, and we may especially regret the fact that so keen and clever a naturalist as Steller did not get an opportunity to explore the regions west of Mount St. Elias before European trade and white adventurers put in an appearance; but it hardly seems a question of doubt whether anyone for that reason has a right to make accusations against the chief of the expedition.
It was very early on the morning of July 21 that the chief suddenly, and contrary to his custom, appeared on deck and gave the command to weigh anchor and stand out to sea. In doing this he set aside his instructions from headquarters to act in accordance with the ship's council. He acted as a sovereign chief, and notwithstanding the fact that both of his lieutenants thought it wrong to leave the newly discovered coast without an adequate supply of water, he overruled all objections and informed them that he assumed all responsibility for his conduct. He was convinced of the entire necessity of it, he said, and thought it unsafe to remain longer in this exposed anchorage. Time did not permit him to go in search of the harbor found by Khitroff on the day previous, and there was moreover a seaward breeze. One fourth of the water-casks remained unfilled.
Before a strong east wind, the St. Peter on that day made fifty miles on a southwesterly course. During the two succeeding days, he continued in this general direction. It was misty, and the coast was invisible, but the sounding-line continued to show a depth of from forty to fifty fathoms. In a council, concerning the deliberations of which Steller has a very confused and incorrect account, it was decided, on July 25, to sail slowly towards Petropavlovsk and, at intervals as wind and weather permitted, to head for the north and west, in order to explore the coast they had left.
They continued on their southwesterly course, and on the next morning, July 26, they were off the Kadiak archipelago. In a latitude of 66° 30', and about sixteen miles toward the north, they saw a high and projecting point, which Bering called St. Hermogenes, in honor of the patron saint of the day. He thought that this point was a continuation of the continent they had left behind them, and as such it is represented on both Müller's and Krasilnikoff's manuscript maps in the archives of the Admiralty. On his third voyage, Cook explored the Kadiak group, which he too had assumed to be a part of the mainland. He now found that Bering's promontory was a small island east of Afognak, but out of respect for Bering, he retained the original name. Krusenstern also calls it St. Hermogenes Island, but later the Russians changed it to Euratchey Island, on account of the great number of marmots there, and since the United. States came into possession of it, the name has been translated, and it is now known as Marmot Island.[82] Steller has not a single word in his diary about St. Hermogenes, and besides, his account at this point is full of inaccuracies.
"Consequently, until July 26," he says, "we sailed along the coast, as these gentlemen thought it was necessary to follow it, while it would have been sufficient, at intervals of a hundred versts, to have sailed a degree or two toward the north." He thus blames them for not having followed the method which at about that time they had agreed upon, and later did follow. His story of their having, for the first five days, sailed along the coast, simply proves, in connection with a series of other incidents in his work, that things were not entered in his diary daily, but written down later from memory; hence its value as proof is considerably diminished.
Along the southeastern coast of Kadiak the voyage was very dangerous. The average depth was twenty-five fathoms; the water was very roily, the weather heavy with fog and rain, and the wind violent. Not until the 31st of July was the weather clear enough for an observation, when they found themselves in a latitude of 54° 49', and had passed the Kadiak archipelago.
In accordance with the plan adopted, they here veered to the northwest to seek the mainland for the purpose of determining its trend. On the night of August 1 (and 2), they suddenly approached land, having only four fathoms of water below the keel. There was a heavy fog, no wind, and a swift current, but they succeeded in shifting about and getting out into eighteen fathoms of water, where they anchored to await daybreak. In the morning, at eight o'clock, a small island was seen at a distance of four miles. It was three miles long, with an east to west trend. A long reef extended out into the sea from the eastern point, seen by them in a direction E. S. E. by E. In the evening they weighed anchor, having a heavy fog, and on the next morning, the island was seen at a distance of seven geographical miles toward the south. Its latitude was calculated as 55° 32', but as all of Bering's determinations of latitude on his return voyage from America show an error of from 30' to 45' less than the true latitude, it must be concluded that the island was in latitude 56° and some minutes. He called the island St. Stephen from the calendar day, but his crew or lieutenants must have called it Foggy Island (Tumannoi), as even Krasilnikoff's manuscript map, in the possession of the Admiralty, has this name. Later the cartography of this region became considerably confused. The name St. Stephen disappeared. Cook called another island Fog Island, while it became customary to consider the island discovered by Bering as identical with Ukamok (Chirikoff Island, Vancouver's Island), where the Russians had a colony, and thus the island itself was finally lost to geography. Notwithstanding the fact that Admiral Krusenstern, in a clever essay, has given an able review of the literature pertaining to this question, and has shown that where Bering saw St. Stephen, Cook, Sarycheff, and Vancouver likewise saw an island, different from Ukamok, and regardless of the fact that for these reasons he restored St. Stephen on his map, Lieutenant Sokoloff, who most recently, in Russian literature, has treated Bering's voyage to America, has wholly disregarded Krusenstern's essay, and says that St. Stephen is identical with Ukamok. Sokoloff's essay is very superficial, and, compared with Krusenstern's weighty reasons, is based on mere supposition. But, although the map of the North Pacific, in the Russian Admiralty (1844), has a Tumannoi Island (that is, Foggy Island, St. Stephen) somewhat northeast of Ukamok, it must be admitted that, until the United States undertakes a new and careful survey of the Aliaska peninsula and its southern surroundings, this question can not be thoroughly decided, probable as it may be that Bering and Krusenstern are both right.
August 3, the voyage was continued toward the northwest. In a latitude of 56° (according to Steller) they saw the high snow-capped mountain peaks of the Aliaska peninsula in a direction N. N. W. by W., but on account of stormy and foggy weather they sought, with an easterly wind, to get back into their main course. Thus they reached, August 4, the Jefdokjejefski Islands in a direction S. S. E. ¾ by E., at a distance of twenty miles from 55° 45' N. These form a group of seven high and rocky islands, which on Russian maps still bears the same name, but in West Europe this name has been displaced, and they are usually called the Semidi, or Semidin, Islands, the name of the largest of the group.
On August 7, they found themselves south of the Jefdokjejefski Islands. But now misfortunes began to pour in upon them. They encountered adverse winds which continued with but few interruptions during the succeeding months. The St. Peter was tossed about on the turbulent and unfamiliar waters of the Aleutian archipelago, where the crew experienced an adventure so fraught with suffering and dire events that it is quite beyond compare in the history of discoveries. At the same time, the scurvy got the upper hand. Bering had a severe attack which rendered him unfit for service. With his illness the bonds of discipline were relaxed. Under these circumstances there was called, on the 10th of August, an extraordinary council, in which all the officers participated. At this meeting it was finally decided to give up the charting of the American coast, and immediately start out upon the direct route homeward on parallel 52°, the latitude of Avacha. The whole crew, from the highest to the lowest, signed this resolution. The facts taken into consideration were that September had been fixed as the extreme limit of time within which to return home, and that they were then in the middle of August. Avacha was at least 1600 miles distant, autumn was at hand with dark nights and stormy weather, and sixteen of the crew were already sick with the scurvy.
With a strong head-wind, in raw and foggy weather, and now and then overtaken by fierce storms, they worked their way slowly along until the 27th of August. The condition of affairs on board had grown continually worse, when it was finally announced that through carelessness and irregularity the supply of water had been reduced to twenty-five casks, a quantity that could not possibly suffice for the 1200 miles which, according to their calculations, yet remained. Hence it was necessary once more to find land to take in water, and on the 27th the St. Peter's prow was again headed for Aliaska. They sailed north one degree and a half, and after a lapse of three days they reached a multitude of high islands, behind which the coast of the mainland arose in the distance.
August 30, the St. Peter lay at anchor off the Shumagins, a group of thirteen treeless, barren, and rocky islands near the coast of Aliaska. The journal gives their situation as latitude 54° 48' N. and longitude 35° 30' E. from Avacha. While the latitude as here determined has the usual error, referred to several times before, the longitude has an error of 6½°. Among these islands the first death on board occurred. It was the sailor Shumagin, who, on the 30th, died in the hands of his mates as they were taking him ashore. The islands were named in honor of him. On the whole the situation was most deplorable. Bering had fallen away so much in his illness that he could not stand, and the others that were sick were carried ashore, and lay scattered along the coast, giving this a very sad and sorrowful aspect. Confusion and uncertainty grew apace, as those in command could not maintain their authority. Waxel and Khitroff, the highest in command, bandied words, whereas the situation demanded firmness and vigor. The only one that preserved any manner of self-possession and forethought was Steller. He immediately went ashore, examined the vegetation of the island, and collected a large number of anti-scorbutic plants, especially scurvy-grass and berries, with which, in the course of a week, he succeeded in restoring Bering to sufficient strength to be able to use his limbs. Through the use of the same remedies the other sufferers were relieved. But Steller thought also of the future. The medicine chest contained "plasters and salves for half an army," but only extremely few real medicines, and hence he suggested to Lieut. Waxel, who was then in command, that he send a number of sailors ashore to gather anti-scorbutic plants, but this excellent and timely advice was rejected.
Furthermore, Steller used all his influence to procure good water. He went ashore with the sailors for this purpose, and as they began to dip water from the first pool they found, one, too, which was connected with the sea during high tide, he directed them to fresh springs a little farther in the interior, but the crew sent some samples on board, and from there came the report that the water was good enough. Thus it was that a new cause of disease—in spite of Steller's protestations—was added to all the others. The water was brackish, and on standing in the casks became unfit for use.
On the whole the stay at the Shumagins, which was unnecessarily prolonged, was very unfortunate. The St. Peter lay at anchor south of them in a very exposed position. On the evening of August 29, a fire was seen on one of the islands, and on this account, Khitroff wished to explore them more thoroughly, although Waxel firmly opposed releasing both of the ship's boats under the present dangerous circumstances. By applying to Bering, who was in the cabin, and hardly understood the situation, Khitroff had his way, and left the ship with the yawl and five men. He was gone four days, during which time the St. Peter was forced to lie at anchor, while a favorable east wind might have carried them several hundred miles toward home. The yawl was dashed to pieces off one of the neighboring islands, and no more came from the expedition than that Lieutenant Waxel, under great difficulty, found it necessary to rescue the six shipwrecked adventurers. Moreover, they experienced a somewhat uninteresting clash with the Innuit (Esquimo)[83] inhabitants of the Aliaska peninsula, of which Müller and Steller both give a detailed account.