64. Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, under date of June 9, 1889, writes the translator: "The locality indicated in Lütke's map is correct. It is consequently on the eastern side of the island. Steller's statement that it was on the northern side is easily explained as follows: The valley where he landed opens toward the northeast, and the corresponding valley on the other side of the island runs southwest; this side consequently became the southern side. At the time of the shipwreck the magnetic deviation was much more easterly than it is now, so that by compass the direction of the eastern coast was much more E.-W. than at present. Throughout his description of Bering Island, Steller says north and south, where we would say east and west.
"My visit to this locality in 1882, I have described in detail in Deutsche Geographische Blätter (1885), where you will also find a sketch map of it, as well as a plan of the house in which the survivors wintered.
"Since I wrote my account, I have been able to consult Steller's own description of the wintering, and I find that the house which I have described and given the plan of, was the one they built in the spring, after the freshet which drove them out of the dug-outs (Gruben) on the bank of the creek, traces of which are still visible. I also found a number of relics at a place which I took to be the point where they rebuilt the vessel. In a letter Mr. Lauridsen suggested to me the probability that I had found not this place, but the locality where the store-house was built, in which the men left what they could not carry on the new vessel, and that the latter must have been built near the southern end of the bay. After reading Steller's own account, however, I feel absolutely certain that the ship was built at the northern end, near the huts and dug-outs, at the place where I found the relics. It is quite probable, however, that the store-house was built in very close proximity, if not on the very spot."
65. Leonhard Stejneger: Fra det yderste Osten. Naturen, Vol. 8. Kristiania, 1884, pp. 65-69.—Proceedings of the United States National Museum, 1884. Investigations Relating to the Date of the Extermination of Steller's Sea-Cow, by Leonhard Stejneger.—Henry W. Elliott: A Monograph of the Seal Islands of Alaska, Washington, 1882.—Neue N. Beiträge, II., 279.—G. W. Steller: Ausf. Beschreibung von sonderbaren Meerthieren. Halle, 1753.—E. Reclus: Geographie, etc., VI., 794.
66. Concerning Chirikoff, full information is given in Sokoloff: Chirikoff's Voyage to America, St. Petersburg, 1849 (Russian). He died in 1748 at Moscow.
See also H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States of North America, Vol. XXXIII., History of Alaska. San Francisco, 1886.—Tr.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] The author gives extracts from other reports of the same tenor, which the translator has seen fit to omit, referring the reader for further information on this subject to Bering's own report, p. 195 of this volume.