Behring Island, with regard both to geography and natural history, is one of the most remarkable islands in the north part of the Pacific. It was here that Behring after his last unfortunate voyage in the sea which now bears his name, finished his long course as an explorer. He was however survived by many of his followers, among them by the physician and naturalist Steller, to whom we owe a masterpiece seldom surpassed—a sketch of the natural conditions and animal life on the island, never before visited by man, where he involuntarily passed the time from the middle of November 1741, to the end of August 1742.[358]
It was the desire to procure for our museums the skins or skeletons of the many remarkable mammalia occurring here, also to compare the present state of the island which for nearly a century and a half has been exposed to the unsparing thirst of man for sport and plunder, with Steller's spirited and picturesque description, which led me to include a visit to the island in the plan of the expedition. The accounts I got at Behring Island from the American newspapers of the anxiety which our wintering had caused in Europe led me indeed to make our stay there shorter than I at first intended. Our harvest of collections and observations was at all events extraordinarily abundant. But before I proceed to give an account of our own stay on the island, I must devote a few words to its discovery and the first wintering there, which has a quite special interest from the island having never before been trodden by the foot of man. The abundant animal life, then found there, gives us therefore one of the exceedingly few representations we possess of the animal world as it was before man, the lord of the creation, appeared.
After Behring's vessel had drifted about a considerable time at random in the Behring Sea, in consequence of the severe scurvy-epidemic, which had spread to nearly all the men on board, without any dead reckoning being kept, and finally without sail or helmsman, literally at the mercy of wind and waves, those on board on the 15th/4th November, 1741, sighted land, off whose coast the vessel was anchored the following day at 5 o'clock P. M. An hour after the cable gave way, and an enormous sea threw the vessel towards the shore-cliffs. All appeared to be already lost. But the vessel, instead of being driven ashore by new
waves, came unexpectedly into a basin 4-1/2 fathoms deep surrounded by rocks and with quite still water, being connected with the sea only by a single narrow opening. If the unmanageable vessel had not drifted just to that place it would certainly have gone to pieces, and all on board would have perished
It was only with great difficulty that the sick crew could put out a boat in which Lieut. Waxel and Steller landed. They found the land uninhabited, devoid of wood, and uninviting. But a rivulet with fresh clear water purled yet unfrozen down the mountain sides, and in the sand hills along the coast were found some deep pits, which when enlarged and covered with sails could be used as dwellings. The men who could still stand on their legs all joined in this work. On the 19th/8th November the sick could be removed to land, but, as often happens, many died when they were brought out of the cabin into the fresh air, others while they were being carried from the vessel or immediately after they came to land. All in whom the scurvy had taken the upper hand to that extent that they were already lying in bed on board the vessel, died. The survivors had scarcely time or strength to bury the dead, and found it difficult to protect the corpses from the hungry foxes that swarmed on the island and had not yet learned to be afraid of man. On the 20th/9th Behring was carried on land; he was already much reduced and dejected, and could not be induced to take exercise. He died on the 19th/8th December.
VITUS BEHRING was a Dane by birth, and when a young man had already made voyages to the East and West Indies. In 1707 he was received into the Russian navy as officer, and as such took part in all the warlike enterprises of that fleet against Sweden. He was in a way buried alive on the island that now bears his name, for at last he did not permit his men to remove the sand that lolled down upon him from the walls of the sand pit in which he rested. For he thought that the sand warmed his chilled body. Before the corpse could be properly buried it had therefore to be dug out of its bed, a circumstance which appears to have produced a disagreeable impression on the survivors. The two Lieutenants, Waxel and Chitrov, had kept themselves in pretty good health at sea, but now fell seriously ill, though they recovered. Only the physician of the expedition, Georg Wilhelm Steller, was all the time in good health, and that a single man of the whole crew escaped with his life was clearly clue to the skill of this gifted man, to his invincible energy and his cheerful and sanguine disposition. These qualities were also abundantly tested during the wintering. On the night before the 10th December/29th November, the vessel, on which no watch was kept, because all the men were required on land to care for the sick, was cast ashore by a violent E.S.E. storm. So great a quantity of provisions was thus lost, that the remaining stock was not sufficient by itself to yield enough food for all the men during a whole winter. Men were therefore sent out in all directions to inquire into the state of the land. They returned with the information that the vessel had stranded, not, as was hoped at first, on the mainland but on an uninhabited, woodless island. It was thus clear to the shipwrecked men that in order to be saved they could rely only on their judgment and strength. At the beginning they found that if any provisions were to be reserved for the voyage home, it was necessary that they should support themselves during winter to a considerable extent by hunting. They did not like to use the flesh of the fox for food, and at first kept to that of the sea-otter. This animal at present is very scarce on Behring Island, but at that time the shore was covered with whole herds of it. They had no fear of man, came from curiosity straight to the fires, and did not run away when any one approached. A dear-bought experience, however, soon taught them caution; at all events, from 800 to 900 head were taken, a splendid catch when we consider that the skin of this animal at the Chinese frontier fetched from 80 to 100 roubles each. Besides, in the beginning of winter two whales stranded on the island. The shipwrecked men considered these then provision depôts, and appear to have preferred whale blubber to the flesh of the sea-otter, which had an unpleasant taste and was tough as leather.[359]
In spring the sea-otters disappeared, but now there came to the island in their stead other animals in large herds, viz sea-bears, seals, and sea-lions. The flesh of the young sea-lion was considered a great delicacy.[360] When the sea-otters became scarcer and more shy and difficult to catch, the shipwrecked men found means also to kill sea-cows, whose flesh Steller considered equal to beef. Several barrels of their flesh were even salted to serve as provisions during the return journey. As the land became clear of snow in the middle of April, Waxel called together the forty-five men who survived to a consultation regarding the steps that ought to be taken in order to reach the mainland. Among many different proposals, that was adopted of building a new vessel with the materials supplied by the stranded one. The three ship-carpenters who had been on board were dead. But fortunately there was among the survivors a Cossack, SAVA STARODUBZOV, who had taken part as a workman in shipbuilding at Okotsk, and now undertook to manage the building of the new vessel. With necessity for a teacher he also succeeded in executing his commission, so that a new St. Peter was launched on the 21st/10th 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 5th September/25th August Kamchatka was sighted, and two days after the St. Peter anchored at Petropaulovsk, where the shipwrecked men found a storehouse 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 then arrival there, of the seventy-six persons who originally took part in the expedition, thirty-two were dead. At Kamchatka 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 Zolikamsk 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 his hunting backwards and forwards across the immeasurable deserts of Siberia. He died soon after, on the 23rd/12th November, 1746, at Tjumen, only thirty-seven years of age, of a fever by which he was attacked during the journey.[361]