FOOTNOTES:
[84] Map III., Appendix.
[85] My view has been most strongly confirmed by the excellent Norwegian naturalist, Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, who in the years 1882-'84 passed eighteen months on Bering island and circumnavigated it. In Deutsche Geographische Blätter, 1885, he describes his trip and gives a good contour map of the island, as well as of Bering's stranding-place, which in honor of him is still called "Komandor," and is situated in the place described above, on the northeastern coast of the island.—Author's Note to American Edition.
For Dr. Stejneger's final remarks on this point the reader is referred to Note 64, in the Appendix, where will be found a letter to the translator.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
THE STAY ON BERING ISLAND.—FAUNA OF THE ISLAND.—A RICH FIELD FOR STELLER.—HIS DESCRIPTIONS IMMORTALIZE THE EXPEDITION.—THE SEA-COW.—ITS EXTERMINATION.—NORDENSKJÖLD REFUTED.—PREPARATIONS FOR WINTERING.—SAD DEATH OF BERING.—AN ESTIMATE OF HIS WORK.—CHIRIKOFF'S RETURN.—THE CREW OF THE ST. PETER LEAVE THE ISLAND.—THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION DISCONTINUED.—BERING'S REPORTS BURIED IN RUSSIAN ARCHIVES.—BERING HONORED BY COOK.
The island upon whose shores Bering, after a voyage of four months, was cast, was a high, rocky, and uninviting country. The snowless mountains of Plutonic rock, wild and jagged, arose perpendicularly out of the sea, and deep ravines with seething mountain streams led into the treeless interior.[86] There was snow on only the highest peaks, and on this cold November night the coast appeared to the shipwrecked unfortunates in all its naked and gloomy solitude, and hence great was their surprise on landing to find the island teeming with animal life, yet undisturbed by human habitation. The Commander Islands, as the group is now called, consist of two large islands and a few rocky islets. The most easterly of the former is Copper Island (Mednie), about thirty-five miles long and three miles wide, covered with high, steep, and jagged mountains, which lie athwart the main trend of the island, S. E. to N. W., and terminate precipitously, often perpendicularly, with a narrow strand at the base scarcely fifty feet wide. On a somewhat larger scale, the same description applies to Bering Island, which, according to Steller, is 23½ geographical miles long and nearly 3¼ wide. It is situated about 30 geographical miles from Kamchatka, between latitude 54° 40' and 55° 25' north, and longitude 165° 40' and 166° 40' east of Greenwich. Only on the west coast, within the shelter of the Sea Lion Island (Arii Kamen) and a lesser islet, is there a fairly good harbor, where the Russians later founded the only colony of the island, consisting of a few Aleuts who cultivate some vegetables, but maintain themselves principally by hunting and fishing. For this purpose they have built, here and there on the east coast, some earth-huts which are used only temporarily. The very high mountains, having a trend from N. W. to S. E., almost everywhere extend clear to the sea, and only here and there along the mouths of the brooks do semicircular coves recede from 700 to 1300 yards into the interior. In Bering's day these coves or rookeries contained a fauna entirely unmolested by human greed and love of chase, developed according to nature's own laws, for which reason great scientific interest attaches to the stranding of the St. Peter. Of this animal life Steller gives us in his various works descriptions which are unexcelled in power and fidelity. These have made Bering's second voyage immortal. Naturalists will again and again turn to them. For this reason it would seem that Steller had no ground for complaint that Bering had taken him from his real field of investigation: Kamchatka—a complaint made in our day by O. Peschel—for on Bering Island he first found that field of labor and that material, the description of which has immortalized his name.[87]
STELLER'S TRIUMPHAL ARCH.
With the exception of the Arctic fox, the higher fauna of these islands were found exclusively among the sea mammals. The most important furred animal at that time was the sea-otter (Enhydra lutris, Linn.), which lived in families on the coast during the whole year, especially, however, in the winter. Its velvety fur brought about 100 rubles on the Chinese border, and hence this animal later became the object of a most eager search. Nordenskjöld says these otters have been driven away, not only from Bering Island, but also from other grounds, where formerly they were slaughtered by the thousand. This statement, however, is not entirely correct. The sea-otter may still be found on Bering Island, and on the adjacent Copper Island (Mednie) it is frequently found, and is protected by just such laws as Nordenskjöld demands for its preservation.
The greatest number of marine animals here were found to belong to the family of eared seals (Otariidœ); namely, the sea-lion (Eumetopias Stelleri), from which oil is obtained, and the fur-seal (Callorhinus ursinus), which is still the world's most important fur-bearing animal. Since the close of the last century, the Russian government has with great care sought to protect this animal, and has built up a national enterprise which yields a large annual income, and which makes it possible for the Russo-American company which has a lease of the business, to kill annually about 30,000 seals and still increase the stock. On this point, too, Nordenskjöld's statements are unreliable and misleading. He puts the annual catch much too high, which, at the time, caused no slight trouble between the Russian government and the company.[88]
On the whole, it seems humiliating to West Europe that it is only decried and tyrannical Russia that has understood how to protect this useful animal. When Russian America, the present Alaska, in 1867 was sold to the United States, some of the best seal fisheries, the Pribyloff Islands, were a part of the purchase. The United States has found it profitable to retain the Russian regulations for seal hunting, for those small islands alone yield the interest on the sum paid for the whole territory.
The eared seals put in their appearance on the Commander Islands in the spring, and are found in the rookeries by the hundreds of thousands until August or September. They proved of the greatest importance for the support of the shipwrecked expedition, and after the sea-otter for a circuit of many miles had been driven away, they furnished a part of the crew's daily means of sustenance.
But the most interesting animal on Bering Island was the sea-cow (Rhytina Stelleri),[89] a very large and ponderous animal from eight to ten meters long and weighing about three tons. It was related to the dugong and lamantine of the southern seas, and the manatus which occurs in Florida and along the Gulf coast. Its habitat seems to have been confined to the shores of the Commander Islands, where it was found in great numbers. Its flesh was very excellent food. Later it was eagerly sought after by the Siberian hunter, whose rapacity exterminated the whole species in less than a generation. The last specimen is said to have been killed in 1768, and hence museums have been very unsuccessful in procuring skeletons of the animal. In his "Voyage of the Vega," Nordenskjöld attempts to show that sea-cows were seen much later, even as late as 1854; but as he bases his assumption chiefly on the statements of some Aleutian natives, who, according to what Dr. Leonhard Stejneger recently has proved, confounded the sea-cow with a toothed whale (denticete), there seems to be no reason whatever for modifying the results arrived at by Baer, Brandt, and Middendorff.[90]
Without this animal wealth it would have gone hard with Bering's expedition as it did later with the unfortunate La Pérouse, whose monument has found a place in Petropavlovsk by the side of Bering's. It would have been hopelessly lost on Bering Island. None of the participants would have seen Asia again, none would even have survived the winter 1741-42, for when the St. Peter stranded, there were on board only a few barrels of junk, a small quantity of groats, and some flour. The flour had been lying in leathern sacks for two years, and in the stranding had been saturated with turbid sea water, and hence was very unfit for food. How fatal, therefore, Waxel's and Khitroff's opposition to Bering might have been.
It was the night between the 5th and 6th of November that the St. Peter reached this coast. On the 6th the weather was calm and clear, but the crew were kept on board from weakness and work, and only Steller and Pleniser could go ashore with a few of the sick. They immediately betook themselves to examining the country, and walked along the coast on either side. Was this an island, or was it the mainland? Could they expect to find human assistance, and could they reach home by land? After two days of exploration, Steller succeeded in satisfying himself on these points, although it was nearly six months before he definitely ascertained that the place was an island. Unlike Kamchatka, the country was treeless, having only a few trailing willows of the thickness of a finger. The animals of the coast were entirely new and strange, even to him, and showed no fear whatever. They had no sooner left the ship, when they saw sea-otters, which they first supposed to be bears or gluttons. Arctic foxes flocked about them in such numbers that they could strike down three or four score of them in a couple of hours. The most valuable fur-bearing animals stared at them curiously, and along the coast Steller saw with wonderment whole herds of sea-cows grazing on the luxuriant algæ of the strand. Not only he had never seen this animal before, but even his Kamchatkan Cossack did not know it. From this fact, Steller concluded that the island must be uninhabited. As the trend of Kamchatka was not the same as that of the island, and as the flora was nevertheless identical, and as he moreover found a window frame of Russian workmanship that had been washed ashore, he was convinced that the country must be a hitherto unknown island in the vicinity of Kamchatka.
Bering shared this view, but the other officers still clung to their illusions, and when Waxel, on the evening of the 6th, came ashore, he even spoke of sending a message for conveyance. Steller, on the other hand, began to make preparations for the winter. In the sand-banks, near an adjacent mountain stream, he and his companions dug a pit and made a roof of driftwood and articles of clothing. To cover up cracks and crevices on the sides, they piled up the foxes they had killed. He exerted himself to obtain wild fowl, seal-beef, and vegetable nourishment for the sick, who were gradually taken ashore and placed under sail tents upon the beach. Their condition was terrible. Some died on deck as soon as they were removed from the close air of their berths, others in the boat as they were being taken ashore, and still others on the coast itself. All attempts at discipline were abandoned, and those that were well grouped themselves into small companies, according to their own pleasure and agreement. The sick and dying were seen on every hand. Some complained of the cold, others of hunger and thirst, and the majority of them were so afflicted with scurvy that their gums, like a dark brown sponge, grew over and entirely covered the teeth. The dead, before they could be buried, were devoured by foxes, which in countless numbers flocked about, not even fearing to attack the sick.
More than a week elapsed before the last of the sick were taken ashore. On November 10, the Commander was removed. He was well protected against the influence of the outer air, and was laid for the night under a tent on the strand. It snowed heavily. Steller passed the evening with him and marveled at his cheerfulness and his singular contentment. They weighed the situation, and discussed the probability of their whereabouts. Bering was no more inclined than Steller to think that they had reached Kamchatka, or that their ship could be saved. The next day he was carried on a stretcher to the sand pits and placed in one of the huts by the side of Steller's. The few that were able to work sought to construct huts for all. Driftwood was collected, pits were dug and roofed, and provisions were brought from the ship. Steller was both cook and physician—the soul of the enterprise. On November 13, the barrack to be used as a hospital was completed, and thither the sick were immediately removed. But still the misery kept increasing. Steller had already given up all hopes of Bering's recovery. Waxel, who had been able to keep up as long as they were on the sea, now hovered between life and death. There was special anxiety on account of his low condition, as he was the only competent seaman that still had any influence, since Khitroff, by his hot and impetuous temper, had incurred the hatred of all. Moreover, those sent to reconnoiter, returned with the news that in a westerly direction they could find no connection with Kamchatka or discover the slightest trace of human habitation. It became stormy; for several days the boat could not venture out, and the ship, their only hope, lay very much exposed near a rocky shore. The anchor was not a very good one, and there was great danger that the vessel would be driven out to sea, or be dashed to pieces on the rocks. The ten or twelve able-bodied men that were left, being obliged to stand in icy water half a day at a time, soon gave way under such burdens. Sickness and want were on every hand. Despair stared them in the face, and not until November 25, when the vessel was driven clear ashore and its keel buried deep in the sand, did their condition seem more secure. They then went quietly to work to prepare for the winter.
In December the whole crew was lodged in five underground huts (dug-outs) on the bank of the stream near the place of landing.[91] The ship's provisions were divided in such a way that every man daily received a pound of flour and some groats, until the supply was exhausted. But they had to depend principally upon the chase, and subsisted almost exclusively upon the above mentioned marine animals and a stranded whale. Each hut constituted a family with its own economical affairs, and daily sent out one party to hunt and another to carry wood from the strand. In this way they succeeded in struggling through the winter, which on Bering Island is more characterized by raging snowstorms (poorgas) than severe cold.
Meanwhile, death made sad havoc among them. Before they reached Bering Island, their dead numbered twelve, the majority of whom died during the last days of the voyage. During the landing and immediately afterwards nine more were carried away. The next death did not occur until November 22. It was the excellent and worthy mate, the seventy-year-old Andreas Hesselberg, who had plowed the sea for fifty years, and whose advice, had it been heeded, would have saved the expedition. Then came no less than six deaths in rapid succession; and finally in December the Commander and another officer died. The last death occurred January 6, 1742. In all, thirty-one men out of seventy-seven died on this ill-starred expedition.
When Bering exerted his last powers to prevent the stranding of the St. Peter, he struggled for life. Before leaving Okhotsk he had contracted a malignant ague, which diminished his powers of resistance, and on the voyage to America scurvy was added to this. His sixty years of age, his heavy build, the trials and tribulations he had experienced, his subdued courage, and his disposition to quiet and inactivity, all tended to aggravate this disease; but he would nevertheless, says Steller, without doubt have recovered if he had gotten back to Avacha, where he could have obtained proper nourishment and enjoyed the comfort of a warm room. In a sandpit on the coast of Bering Island, his condition was hopeless. For blubber, the only medicine at hand, he had an unconquerable loathing. Nor were the frightful sufferings he saw about him, his chagrin caused by the fate of the expedition, and his anxiety for the future of his men, at all calculated to check his disease. From hunger, cold, and grief he slowly pined away. "He was, so to speak, buried alive. The sand kept continually rolling down upon him from the sides of the pit and covered his feet. At first this was removed, but finally he asked that it might remain, as it furnished him with a little of the warmth he so sorely needed. Soon half of his body was under the sand, so that after his death, his comrades had to exhume him to give him a decent burial." He died on the 8th[92] of December, 1741, two hours before daybreak, from inflammation of the bowels.
"Sad as his death was," says Steller, "that intrepidity and seriousness with which he prepared to meet death was most worthy of admiration." He thanked God for having been his guide from youth, and for having given him success through life. He sought in every way possible to encourage his companions in misfortune to hopeful activity, and inspire them with faith in Providence and the future. Notwithstanding his conviction that they had been cast upon the shores of an unknown land, he was not disposed to discourage the others by expressing himself on this point. On the 9th of December his body was interred in the vicinity of the huts, between the graves of the second mate and the steward. At the departure from the island there was placed upon his grave a plain wooden cross, which also served to show that the island belonged to the Russian crown. This cross was renewed several times, and in the sixties, so far as is known, twenty-four men erected a monument to his honor in the governor's garden (the old churchyard) in Petropavlovsk, where a monument to the unfortunate La Pérouse is also found, and where Cook's successor, Captain Clerke, found his last resting place.
With Bering that mental power, which had been the life of these great geographical expeditions and driven them forward toward their goal, was gone. We have seen how his plans were conceived; how through long and dreary years he struggled in Siberia to combine and execute plans and purposes which only under the greatest difficulties could be combined and executed; how by his quiet and persistent activity he endeavored to bridge the chasm between means and measures, between ability to do and a will to do,—a condition typical of the Russian society of that time. We have seen how he surmounted the obstacles presented by a far-off and unwilling government, a severe climate, poor assistants, and an inexperienced force of men. We have accompanied him on his last expedition, which seems like the closing scene of a tragedy, and like this ends with the death of the hero.
He was torn away in the midst of his activity. Through his enterprise a great continent was scientifically explored, a vast Arctic coast, the longest in the world, was charted, a new route to the western world was found, and the way paved for Russian civilization beyond the Pacific, while enormous sources of wealth—a Siberian Eldorado—were opened on the Aleutian Islands for the fur-hunter and adventurer. Russian authors have compared Bering with Columbus and Cook. He certainly was for Russia, the land of his adoption, what the two former were for Spain and England—a great discoverer, an honest, hardy, and indefatigable pioneer for knowledge, science, and commerce. He led Europe's youngest marine out upon explorations that will ever stand in history as glorious pages, and as living testimony of what Northern perseverance is able to accomplish even with most humble means.
And yet he only partly succeeded in accomplishing what for sixteen years had been the object of his endeavors. His voyage to America was merely a reconnoitering expedition, which, in the following summer, was to have been repeated with better equipments.
Chirikoff, who on the expedition in 1741, about simultaneously with Bering,[93] discovered a more southerly part of the North American coast, returned to Avacha in such an impaired condition that, in 1742, he could undertake no enterprise of importance.[94] On account of the great misfortunes that overwhelmed the expedition, Laptjef was prevented from completing the charting of Kamchatka. Thus we see that on every side of Bering's grave lay unfinished tasks. These tasks were inherited from the Dano-Russian explorer by his great successor Cook, and other younger navigators. Moreover, his death occurred at an extremely fatal period; for in these same dark December days while Bering was struggling with death in the sandpits of Bering Island, Biron, Münnich, and Ostermann lost their supremacy in St. Petersburg. The Old Russian party, the opponents of Peter the Great's efforts at reform, came into power, and during Elizabeth's inert administration, all modern enterprises, the Northern Expedition among them, were allowed to die a natural death. At Avacha and Okhotsk affairs wore a sorrowful aspect. The forces of the expedition had been decimated by sickness and death, their supplies were nearly exhausted, their rigging and sails destroyed by wind and weather, the vessels more or less unseaworthy, and East Siberia drained and devastated by famine; only Bering's great powers of perseverance could have collected the vanishing forces for a last endeavor. On September 23, 1743, an imperial decree put an end to any further undertakings. Meanwhile, the crew of the St. Peter had, in August, 1742, returned to Avacha in a boat made from the timber of the stranded vessel. Chirikoff had previously departed for Okhotsk, to which place also Spangberg returned from his third voyage to Japan. Gradually the forces of the various expeditions gathered in Tomsk, where, first under the supervision of Spangberg and Chirikoff, and later that of Waxel and other officers, they remained until 1745. Thus ended the Great Northern Expedition.
But Bering's ill fate pursued him even after death. During the reign of Empress Elizabeth, nothing was done to make known the results of these great and expensive explorations, nor to establish the reputation of the discoverers. The reports of Bering and his co-workers, which make whole cartloads of manuscript, were buried in the archives of the Admiralty. Only now and then did a meager, and usually incorrect, account come to the knowledge of the world. Some of the geographers of that day insisted that the Russian government system of suppression merely aimed at excluding the rest of Europe from that profitable maritime trade through the Arctic seas for which the Northern Expedition had opened the way. Ignorance on this subject was so great that Joseph de l'Isle ventured even before the French Academy to refer to himself as the originator of the expedition,—to rob Bering of his dearly bought honor, and to proclaim to the world that Bering accomplished no more on this expedition than his own shipwreck and death. With Buache he published a book and a map to prove his statements. The name De l'Isle at that time carried with it such weight that he might have succeeded in deceiving the world for a time, if G. F. Müller had not, in an anonymous pamphlet written in French, disproved these falsehoods. But even Müller's sketch in Sammlung Russischer Geschichte (1758), the first connected account published concerning these expeditions, has great defects, as we have seen, not only from the standpoint of historical accuracy, but it also shows a lack of appreciation of the geographical results obtained by Bering. Hence it would have been impossible for Cook to render the discoverer long-deferred justice, if he had not known D'Anville's map and Dr. Campbell's essay. Thus it was West Europe that last century rescued Bering's name from oblivion. In our day the Russian Admiralty has had this vast archival material examined and partly published, but much must yet be done before a detailed account can be given of the enterprises we have attempted to sketch, or of the man who was the soul of them all. We hardly feel disposed, with Professor Von Baer, to urge the erection of a monument in St. Petersburg, as a restitution for long forgetfulness, former misjudgment, and lack of appreciation. As Russia's first navigator and first great discoverer, he certainly has merited such a distinction. We shall, however, consider our task accomplished, if we have succeeded in giving in these pages a reliable account of the life and character of a man who deserves to be remembered, not only by that nation which must ever count Vitus Bering among her good and faithful sons, but also by the country that harvested the fruits of his labors.
BERING'S MONUMENT IN PETROPAVLOVSK.
(FROM WHYMPER.)