Bering Sea

“ Far ahead there projects straight out in the sea a long spit of land backed by high hills, the westernmost point of North America—Cape Prince of Wales! Bering is vindicated! Just fifty years from Bering's exploration of 1728, the English navigator finds what Bering found: that America and Asia are not united; that no Northeast Passage exists; that no great oceanic body lies north of New Spain; that Alaska—as the Russian maps had it after Bering's death—is not an island.
Wind, rain, roily, shoaly seas breaking clear over the ship across decks drove Cook out from land to deeper water. ”

“ The rougher waters of Bering Sea have power no farther inland than their foaming at the feet of Waterfall Head and the dark bases of the Prince, for they rapidly fade into a smooth, still peace as the queer, hook-like sand-spit of Oolachta Harbor is reached, and the anchorage of Illoolook village is attained; its houses and barraboras just peep out from the obscuring foothills of the mountain upon which we stand, and we can faintly discern a delicate [Pg 163] fringe of sea-foam along the border of a long-curved beach in front. ”

“ Lawrence is the largest island in Bering Sea. It is directly south of Bering Straits, one hundred and eighty miles distant from the Diomedes; it is eighty to eighty-five miles in length, with an average width of fifteen or twenty. The sea has built onto it quite extensively, in very much the same manner as it has filled out and extended the coast of St. Paul, of the Pribylov group. At Kagallegak, on the east shore, the island is made up of coarse feldspathic, red granitic flats and hills, with extensive lagoons and lakelets. ”

“ The decline in the fur-seal herds of Bering Sea is due to the growth of a rival sealing industry—the hunting of the animals at sea with spear or shot-gun, known as pelagic sealing. [1] Stragglers from the migrating herd had from the earliest times been taken by the Indians of Cape Flattery and Vancouver Island, going out from the shore in their canoes, but the number so captured was small. In 1879, however, sailing vessels began to be used to carry the hunters and their canoes out to the main body of the herd, and to enable them to follow its movements. ”

“ Laurence.—Bering’s Straits.—The Russian Fur Company.—The Aleuts.—Their Character.—Their Skill and Intrepidity in hunting the Sea-otter.—The Sea-bear.—Whale-chasing.—Walrus-slaughter.—The Sea-lion.
Bering Sea is extremely interesting in a geographical point of view, as the temperature of its coasts and islands exhibits so striking a contrast with that part of the Arctic Ocean which extends between Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Spitzbergen, and affords us the most convincing proof of the benefits we owe to the Gulf Stream, and to the mild south-westerly winds which sweep across the Atlantic. ”

“ The tide-rip was mistaken for earthquake; and when the lurid glare of volcanic smoke came through the fog, the sailors huddled panic-stricken below-decks and refused to obey orders. Every man became his own master; and if that ever works well on land, it means disaster at sea. Thus it has almost always been with the inefficient and the misfits who have gone out in ships—land-lubbers trying to be navigators. Just when Bering's crew should have braced themselves to resist the greatest stress, they collapsed and huddled together with bowed heads, inviting the worst that fate could do to them. ”

“ I am sure that, unless a vast abundance of good fishing-ground was near by, no such congregation of seal-life as is that under discussion on the Seal Islands could exist. The whole eastern half of Bering Sea, in its entirety, is a single fish-spawning bank, nowhere deeper than fifty to seventy-five fathoms, averaging, perhaps, forty; also, there are great reaches of fishing-shoals up and down the northwest coast, from and above the Straits of Fuca, bordering the entire southern, or Pacific coast, of the Aleutian Islands. ”

“ Novgorod and Abö were in constant communication with Lübeck and Stralsund;560 and Wisby, on the island of Gotland at the great crossroads of the Baltic,561 had the focal significance of the Piræus in ancient Aegean trade.
Bering Sea.
If we turn to Asia, we find that even the unfavorable Arctic location of Bering Sea has been unable to rob it entirely of historical significance. This is the one spot where a native American race has transplanted itself by its natural expansion to Asiatic shores. ”

“ The shallow depths of Bering Sea give rise to a very bad surf, and though none of the natives can swim, as far as I could learn, yet they are quite creditable surfmen, and work the heavy “baidar” in and out from the landing adroitly and circumspectly. They put a sentinel upon the bluffs over Nah Speel, and go and come between the rollers as he signals. They are not graceful oarsmen under any circumstances, but can pull heartily and coolly together when in a pinch. ”

“ With a very good breeze, they had been enabled to sail 164 miles, and an observation showed that they were in latitude 64° 27'. According to this, Bering was out of the strait and getting farther and farther away from the American continent.
August 18, the wind was light and the weather clear. On the 20th, beyond the Island of St. Lawrence, he met other Chukchees, who told him that they had made journeys from the Kolyma River westward to Olenek, but that they never went by sea. They knew of the Anadyr fort which lay farther to the south; on this coast there dwelt people of their race ”

“ North of the Togiak River are several small, rocky islets which, having a nucleus of solid granite, are the cause of a large series of sand and mud reefs. Upon those shoals the huge walrus of Bering Sea is wont to crawl and lazily sun himself in herds of thousands. He is practically secure here from attack, since the varying shifts of the tide and its furious rush in ebb and flood make a trip to the islets one of positive danger, even to a most hardy and well-acquainted hunter. ”

“ Off there, a long way off, lies the Bering Sea. He may have crossed the narrow straits and plunged into Siberia. We can travel only when the snow is hard and deep enough to cover the undergrowth. We must go. ”

“ Along by the close of 1743, the survivors of Bering’s second voyage of exploration and Tscherikov brought back to Petropaulovsk an enormous number of skins which they had secured on the Aleutian and Commander Islands, until then unknown to the Kamchatkans or the Russians. In spite of the rude appliances and scanty resources at the command of these eager men, they fitted out rude wooden shallops and boldly pushed themselves over dark and tempestuous seas to the unknown and rumored resorts of the sea-otter. ”

“ The mile of the journal is the Italian mile, which is somewhat longer than the English mile. Bering's course was nearly all the time along the coast, in from nine to twelve fathoms of water, and usually with land in sight to the north and west. On July 27, they passed Cape St. Thaddeus at a distance of three miles, and here the sea seemed fairly alive with spotted whales, seals, sea-lions, and dolphins. ”

“ Here then we have the third Serdze Kamen, and we can now see how it has wandered about the northeast corner of Asia. As a matter of fact, it is situated in a latitude nearly the same as the most northerly point reached by Bering, but unfortunately this does not at all answer Müller's description. It does not project eastward into the sea, but on the contrary, its main direction is toward the northwest. At the base of this headland, the coast does not in a striking manner extend toward the west, but continues in its former direction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Half the crew of seventy-seven perish of starvation and scurvy. Bering himself lies dying in a sandpit, with the earth spread over him for warmth. Outside the sand holes, {213} where the Russians crouch, scream hurricane gales and white billows and myriad sea birds. The ships have been wrecked. The Russians are on an unknown island. Day dawn, December 8, lying half buried in the sand, Bering breathes his last. On rafts made of wreckage the remnant of his crew find way back to Asia, but they have discovered a trail across the sea to a new land. Fur hunters are moving from the east, westward. ”

“ In the middle of the 17th century, those Cossacks that conquered the Amoor country had opened this river navigation, and now Bering re-opened it. The stores were transported down the Lena, up the Aldan, Maya, and Yudoma rivers, thence across the Stanovoi Mountains, down the Urak, and by sea to Okhotsk. These transportations at first employed five hundred soldiers and exiles, and later more than a thousand. ”

“ So summer waited for open water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretching of days and cracking its stiff joints. Now an air-hole ate into the ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to freeze again. Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a yard. But still the river was loth to loose its grip. It was a slow travail, and man, used to nursing nature with pigmy skill, able to burst waterspouts and harness waterfalls, could avail nothing against the billions of frigid tons which refused to run down the hill to Bering Sea. ”

“ THE SEA-OTTER HUNTERS How the Sea-otter Pelts brought back by Bering's Crew led to the Exploitation of the Northwest Coast of America—Difference of Sea-otter from Other Fur-bearing Animals of the West—Perils of the Hunt
When the castaway crew of Vitus Bering looked about for means to exist on the barren islands where they were wrecked, they found the kelp beds and seaweed fields of the North Pacific literally alive with a little animal, which the Russians called "the sea-beaver." ”

“ New World was to open up before them. According to the plan adopted, a southeasterly course was taken, and in spite of some unfortunate friction, Bering gave Chirikoff the lead, so as to leave him no cause for complaint. They kept their course until the afternoon of June 12, when they found themselves, after having sailed over six hundred miles in a southeasterly direction, in latitude 46° 9' N. and 14° 30' east of Avacha. According to De l'Isle's map they should long before have come to the coasts of Gamaland, but as they only saw sea and sky, Bering gave the command to turn back. ”

“ On the seventh day, the party in boats came to the mouth of a river, and twelve days later, to the mouth of another. At about seven miles from this point there extends eastward far into the sea a headland, which is first mountainous, but then flat, as far as the eye can reach. This headland is probably what induced Captain Bering to turn back. Among the mountains on this promontory there is one which, as already noted, is by the natives of Anadyrskoi Ostrog called Serdze Kamen. From here Pavlutski started for the interior. ”

“ His little fleet became dispersed in a storm, and Bering pursued his discoveries alone. These were not unimportant, for he reached the grand chain of the rock-girt Aleutian Islands, and others nearer the mainland of America. At length the scurvy broke out in virulent form among his crew, and he attempted to return to Kamchatka. The sickness increased so much that the “two sailors who used to be at the rudder were obliged to be led in by two others who could hardly walk, and when one could sit and steer no longer, one in little better condition supplied his place. ”

“ Peter. The journal, as well as Steller, describes St. Elias as mountainous, especially in the southern part, thickly covered with low, coniferous trees, and Waxel particularly mentions the fact that off the coast of the island's southern point, Bering's Cape St. Elias, there was a single cliff in the sea, a "kekur," which is also marked on the map. Sarycheff and Sauer speak of Kayak Island as mountainous and heavily timbered. Its southern extremity rises above the rest of the island and ends very abruptly in a naked, white, saddle-shaped mountain. ”

“ Apart from this, it may be added that the northern coast of Siberia from East Cape west to Cape Shelagskoi is represented as mountainous throughout its extent. A legend states that it is laid down from older charts and information. This relieves Bering from the responsibility for the fictitious or at least grossly erroneous and exaggerated form and direction given to Cape Shelagskoi on his chart. The west coast of the Okhotsk sea and part of its northeastern shores not visited by Bering are stated to be laid down from "information." ”