cow, grazed in herds on the fields of sea-kelp and
gazed languidly without fear on the newcomer--Man. This was the famous
sea-cow described by the enthusiastic Steller, but long since extinct.
Blue foxes swarmed round the very feet of the {42} men with such hungry
boldness that half a dozen could be clubbed to death before the others
scampered. Later, Steller was to see the seal rookeries, that were to
bring so much wealth to the world, the sea-lions that roared along the
rocks till the surf shook, the sea-otter whose rare pelt, more priceless
than beaver or sable, was to cause the exploration and devastation of the
northern half of the Pacific coast.

The land was as it had appeared to the ship--utterly treeless except for
trailing willows. The brooks were not yet frozen, and snow had barely
powdered the mountains; but where the coves ran in back between the
mountains from the sea were gullies or ditches of sand and sedge. When
Steller presently found a broken window casing of Kamchatka half buried
in the sand, it gave Waxel some confidence about being on the mainland of
Asia; but before Steller had finished his two days' reconnoitre, there
was no mistaking the fact--this was an island, and a barren one at the
best, without tree or shelter; and here the castaways must winter.

The only provisions now remaining to the crew were grease and mouldy
flour. Steller at once went to work. Digging pits in the narrow gullies
of sand, he covered these over with driftwood, the rotten sail-cloth,
moss, mud, and foxskins. Cracks were then chinked up with clay and more
foxskins. By the 8th of November he was ready to have the crew landed;
but the ship rolled helpless as a log to the tide, and the few well {43}
men of the staff, without distinction of officers from sailors, had to
stand waist-deep in ice-slush to steady the stretchers made of mast poles
and sail-cloth, that received the sick lowered over decks. Many of the
scurvy stricken had not been out of their berths for six weeks. The
fearful depression and weakness, that forewarn scurvy, had been followed
by the pains, the swollen limbs, the blue spots that presage death. A
spongy excrescence covered the gums. The teeth loosened. The slightest
noise was enough to throw the patient into a paroxysm of anguished
fright; and some died on the decks immediately on contact with the
cuttingly cold air. Others expired as they were lowered to the
stretchers; others, as they