but, to judge by the writing books
which lay about in the schoolroom, the education here is not to be
despised. The specimens of writing at least were distinguished by their
cleanness, and by an even and beautiful style. At "the colony" the
houses were collected at one place into a village, situated near the
sea-shore at a suitable distance from the fishing ground in a valley
overgrown in summer by a rich vegetation, but treeless and surrounded by
treeless rounded heights. From the sea this village has the look of a
northern fishing station. There are besides some scattered houses here
and there on other parts of the island, for instance on its
north-eastern side, where the potato is said to be cultivated on a small
scale, and at the fishing place on the north side where there are two
large sheds for skins and a number of very small earth-holes used only
during the slaughter season.

[Illustration: THE COLONY ON BEHRING ISLAND. (After a photograph.) ]

[Illustration: THE "COLONY" ON COPPER ISLAND. (After a photograph.) ]

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 disco