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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.[1] 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
[1] These pits or earth huts lay in a direction from north to south. Next
to Steller’s hut was the miserable pit in which Vitus Bering, a hundred
and forty-eight years ago, drew his last breath. August 30, 1882, Dr.
Stejneger visited this place, of which he gives the following description in
Deutsche Geographische Blätter, 1885, pp. 265-6: “I was first attracted to the
ruins of the huts in which the shipwrecked crew passed a winter a
hundred and forty-one years previous. On a projecting edge of the western
slope of the mountain, in the northern corner of the valley, stands a large
Greek cross. Tradition says that Bering was buried there. The present
cross is of recent date. The old one, erected by the Russian Company,
was shattered by a storm, but the stump may still be seen. No one thought
of erecting a new one, until Hr. von Grebnitski attended to the matter.
Directly southeast of the cross, close to the edge of a steep declivity,
about twenty feet high, lie the fairly well preserved ruins of the house.
The walls are of peat, about three feet high and three feet thick. They
were covered with a very luxuriant growth of grass, and, moreover, swarms
of mosquitoes helped make investigation very unpleasant work. * * *
The floor was covered with a thick turf, the removal of which was out of
the question. I probed the whole surface with a bayonet, but nothing of
significance was found. * * * A part of the crew were undoubtedly
lodged in the sandpits under the barrow, of which Steller speaks. And in
fact traces of the pits still exist, although they no longer have any
definite form, being, moreover, so overgrown with vegetation that nothing
could be ascertained from them. Some Arctic foxes had burrowed there.
At our approach the whole brood came out, and in close proximity stood
curiously gazing at us. Steller and his companions are gone, but the
Arctic fox, which played them so many tricks, is still there. The pits,
now merely an irregular heap of sand filled with burrows, lie close to the
brook, where it curves sharply toward the west, cutting into the declivity
on which the house stands.”—Author’s Note to American Edition.
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