When Steller asked what land they thought it was, Waxell replied, “Juan da Gamma [sic] Land” (probably with a wink to the others, since he was a well-known disbeliever in the mythical islands that had wasted so much of their time). Steller was a supporter of “Monsieur Delisle” and his chart, and he reminded himself that he was a member of the academy, after all, and not just an ignorant seaman. On the nineteenth, Steller again thought he saw land, “but nobody but myself and a few others would believe or see it,” though the usual indications were present: the declining wind, sea weeds, sea mammals, and “a species of cod which lives on the banks at a depth of 90 fathoms at the most.” They may have eaten cod for dinner that night. On August 20, when they had steered farther south, Waxell “asked mockingly” whether “I was still seeing land.” But Steller, never invited to take part in important decisions, wrote with his customary sardonic tone that “they could see no farther than nature and experience permitted them.” No land exists in that region, and the most any of them could have seen were clouds on the horizon. The disputes and friction were escalating as the voyage wore on.
Then came several days of good easterly wind, before the ship was attacked by yet another “violent” storm during which “heavy squalls and waves” washed over the deck. On August 27, Bering called the three senior officers into his cabin again for another sea council: only a third of the water barrels remained full, and they knew there wasn’t enough to make it to Avacha Bay on Kamchatka “if the contrary winds continue to blow.” By their calculations, they had to travel about 1,240 nautical miles before reaching Avacha Bay, but at the speed they were traveling it would be two and a half months before they reached it. They agreed to turn the ship north again “for safety’s sake” and to “go nearer the land with a view to finding good anchorage where we might take on water enough to last until our return, so that, in case of head winds we should not suffer extremely.” They all signed the document. Steller wrote in his journal that of course, if they had just filled up all the water barrels when they were safely settled off of Kayak Island a month earlier, this latest delay and quest “would not have been necessary.”
The ship cruised north with fair winds and clear skies, and they soon saw signs of nearby land: sea lions, gulls, and floating vegetation. On August 29, they spied a cluster of five smaller islands with what appeared to be a mainland on the horizon, and they steered closer to look for a safe place to land. By noon they sailed in and anchored in the lee on the east side of Nagai Island, one of the largest of the Shumagin Islands at around thirty miles long. The Shumagin chain contains around fifty islands of varying sizes. The weather was perfect for a shore expedition, low winds and clear sky, and in the afternoon Waxell sent Yushin off toward the island in the small boat to search for a good anchorage. At around eight in the evening, they decided to move the St. Peter to a point midway between Nagai Island and a small nearby island called Near Island to keep it “secure from many winds.” They found themselves surrounded by a cluster of small islands, in a body of water that is now aptly named Bay of Islands. Later that night, Khitrov spied in the distance a fire burning on a small island about eight miles to the northwest (now called Turner Island).
In the morning Waxell organized two parties, one led by Khitrov to go and investigate the site of the previous night’s fire on Turner Island and the other led by Hesselberg to go to nearby Nagai Island to search for a freshwater spring. Bering offered that Steller could go with Hesselberg, and Steller accepted “very kindly.” The relations between Steller and the others had not improved, and he suspected that Bering’s offer was to distract him “in order that the naval officers might have the honor of the expected discovery” of native peoples on the other island. Although Steller was curious to meet native peoples, he hoped that “both parties might find something useful.” Hesselberg led his ten crew, plus Steller, Plenisner, and Steller’s servant, Lepekhin, to a sheltered cove below a cliff. According to Steller, the island was “bare and wretched,” spattered with lime from generations of seabirds, and covered in twisted skeletal shrubs, crooked and interwoven, clawing a hold into the stony earth. Nowhere could he find a stick more than two feet long.
Steller and his two companions set off immediately inland toward the rocky and mountainous interior and discovered several clear springs. He was appalled when he returned to discover that Hesselberg had found a small lake or pond about two hundred yards from the shore and that “the sailors had chosen the first and nearest stagnant puddle and already started operations.” Steller tested the water and found it to be alkaline and brackish, spat it out, and sent back an urgent appeal to Waxell on the ship, noting that with such stagnant water, “the scurvy would quickly increase and that, because of its lime content, the people would become dried up and lose strength and that this water, after a short while in the vessel, would even increase in salinity from day to day and finally through standing become salt water.” He sent aboard a sample of the water he had discovered and claimed that it was much better than Hesselberg’s and urged Waxell to sample both. Although he had found a much better spring farther inland, owing to the manner of his suggestion and the bad blood, he was refused.
The sailors continued to fill up at their “beloved salty puddle” and row the barrels of brine back to the ship. They should have heeded Steller’s advice not to slake their thirst on tainted water. As the ship’s surgeon, Steller claimed he was ignored out of “the old overbearing habit of contradicting,” which is entirely possible, given the low level of relations between him and the officers and since he had been wrong on so many previous occasions. Although in this case Steller was attempting to “preserve the life of my fellow beings as well as my own,” the answer was “Why, what is the matter with this water? The water is good, fill up with it!” Disgusted, Steller and his party set off inland and discovered a large lake nearly two miles long and a mile wide, and he then asked Hesselberg to use this lake water, which would involve an additional mile of rowing, but having received his reply from Waxell, Hesselberg declined. Waxell later acknowledged his error in not being diligent about the water quality, allowing himself to be goaded into a poor decision by Steller’s irritating personality. “The water was good,” he wrote of the two samples, “but although taken from a lake there was, nevertheless, some sea water in it, brought by the tide which sometimes inundated the island. Afterwards we felt disastrous effects from its use in sickness and the loss of several of our men, who died.” But, he continued, “such water was always better than nothing, for we could at any rate use it for cooking.”
Waxell’s excuse was that they had no time for delays and that he thought any water, however imperfect, was better than none. “Our ship was not lying at all safely. Where she was, almost any southerly wind could pounce down upon us without us being able to run for shelter anywhere. That is why we wished to replenish our supplies of water with haste, so that we might sail out back into the open sea.” Waxell’s words seem more like justification after the fact, since they spent two days in the Bay of Islands and could have easily gotten freshwater from Steller’s spring or lake. While the sick sailors were brought from the ship and rowed ashore for some fresh air, Steller carried his surly mood with him when stalking about the barren hump of land. When he came upon a small black fox barking at him, he hoisted his rifle and fired a shot, hoping to keep it as “evidence.” But he was a poor marksman, and it fled before he could reload. He also encountered several red foxes but was likewise unable to obtain a specimen for his collection.
WHILE STELLER EXPLORED NAGAI ISLAND and Hesselberg supervised the collection and stowing of the tainted water, Khitrov was exploring the island where they had seen a fire the night before. At first Waxell, who was in command, did not want Khitrov to take the smaller jolly boat for his investigations because of the St. Peter’s exposed anchorage and the large distance between the ship and the island, fearing that they could become lost and never regain the ship if a storm blew in or the wind cha
nged. Khitrov, echoing Steller’s and Chirikov’s complaints against Bering, railed against what he believed was Waxell’s preoccupation with safety. Khitrov insisted that Waxell’s refusal to let him take the smaller boat be entered into the logbook, and so Waxell relented, “preferring to avoid the possibility of being made answerable in the future for not investigating it,” and went into the great cabin to discuss the matter with Bering. Bering roused himself and said that Khitrov should be allowed to go with a small crew to investigate. All consultations complete and the papers signed, Khitrov chose five men to accompany him, including a Chukchi interpreter. They were armed with guns and a selection of gifts. Bering gave them instructions on what to do in various situations but above all instructed them “to be kind.” They rowed to the island in the afternoon and hiked to where the fire had been seen.
The men discovered the still-smoldering fire pit, but no people. When he spied an approaching storm, Khitrov and the five others rushed down from the hills and tried to make their boat ready to return to the St. Peter. But by the time they got the small boat in the water, the waves had grown so enormous that they were nearly swamped and flooded, and Khitrov steered the boat toward Nagai Island, which was much closer than the ship, to a place near where the others had recently disembarked. The surf ground the boat against the stones of the beach, damaging it and stranding them. They rushed about collecting all the driftwood they could easily find and built a huge bonfire to signal the ship and to keep themselves from hypothermia, as they were freezing and wet. When Khitrov and his men failed to return to the ship due to the storm, Steller, who had a particular dislike of him, wrote that “I now thanked God that through the cunning plots of the naval men I had been kept away from his company.” The storm raged, “and we were exposed to all the wildness of the sea” until the evening of September 2, when Waxell could send the longboat to rescue them. It was not until September 3 that Khitrov and his men regained the St. Peter, abandoning the damaged jolly boat.
Khitrov was not popular, and Steller wrote that “if he had not gone at all or if, on not meeting anybody, he had returned betimes and thereby had not delayed the watering by depriving us of the yawl, we could have gotten out with the fair gale and been more than a hundred miles further on our course.… Everyone grumbled because whatever this man had touched from Okhotsk on until the return voyage, had gone wrong and had brought misfortune.” If not for Khitrov’s delay by the storm, his third misfortune in a series that had affected the timing of the expedition—events that cannot really be blamed on his competence as a mariner or officer, it should be noted—the St. Peter would have been at sea heading west for many days instead of remaining anchored off of Nagai Island, waiting for another storm to pass. It is often said that an enterprise is doomed seldom by a single misfortune, but by an accumulation of small mistakes and timely accidents.
While this latest delay was to have profound repercussions, it also produced a curious and fascinating encounter, unexpected at this point of the voyage.
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON of September 5, the worried mariners were roused from their torpor by the sound of people yelling from the high grassy hills above the steep, rocky cliffs of Bird Island. Soon, two small skin boats (which Steller correctly compared to the kayaks of Greenlanders) paddled out toward the ship, each with a person in the middle. When they were in voice range, the two men began a long speech in a language unknown to either of the Kamchadal interpreters, Tchuktchi or Koriak. These were the first Americans they had encountered, and Steller was quivering with excitement, “eagerness and full of wonder.” When they shouted back, the men pointed to their ears. They then rummaged around their boats and produced a stick with a hawk’s wing affixed to it and tossed it toward the ship. Taking this as a sign of friendship, Bering ordered a board to be lowered on which were piled gifts: red cloth, mirrors, copper bells, iron beads, and five knives. They rowed closer and offered the gifts, which the “Americans received with great pleasure.” The kayakers then tossed over two thin rods with falcon feathers and claws on them. Steller wrote that “I cannot tell whether it was meant as a sacrifice or a sign of good friendship.” Then they paddled back to shore and shouted and gesticulated for the mariners to follow them and made motions of eating and drinking. Bering ordered Waxell to ready the sole remaining shore boat and take more presents and some Russian vodka. The party consisted of nine armed sailors, the Kamchadal interpreter, and Steller—“lances, sabres and guns all covered in canvas so as to not rouse suspicion.”
Waxell anchored the boat a stone’s throw from the rocky and treacherous shore. Two Russian sailors and the Kamchadal interpreter stripped off their clothes and leaped over the side, plunged into the freezing water up to their armpits. They were unarmed, and Waxell ordered them to stay within sight and not to do anything quickly or in an intimidating manner. They clambered ashore and walked over to a small group of Americans, who were “full of wonder and friendliness” and kept pointing over the hills to the far side of the island, perhaps indicating that they lived on the other side. The Russians offered them more presents, which were refused. The Americans then took the newcomers by the arms “quite deferentially,” eased them back to their nearby encampment, and seated them and offered them whale blubber. They were “mostly young or middle aged people, they are of medium stature, strong and stocky yet fairly well proportioned,” with long black hair and slightly flat noses and dark eyes. They wore “whale-gut shirts with sleeves, very neatly sewed together.” Many of them had bone piercings on their faces and bodies.
A man grabbed his kayak under his arm, carried it to the shore, seated himself in it at the edge of the water, and paddled out to the St. Peter. “He was evidently the eldest,” Waxell wrote, “and I am sure the most eminent of them all.” Waxell then produced vodka and tobacco, against Steller’s pleadings, and after several Russians downed cups handed a full cup to the man. The American was none too pleased, spitting out the vodka and looking sour and ill, and “turning to his fellows screeched most horribly.” Then as Steller recounts, the Russians proclaimed that “the Americans had the stomachs of sailors” and, “intending to neutralize the first displease with a new one,” passed over a lighted pipe of tobacco and indicated how to use it. The man coughed and paddled away, looking a bit disgusted. “The smartest European,” mused Steller in one of his oddly forward-thinking speculations, “would have done just the same if he had been treated to fly mushroom or rotted fish soup and willow bark, which the Kamchadals, however, consider such delicacies.”
While the men onshore continued their mutual inspection, Waxell tried to coax more people to paddle out to the St. Peter in their kayaks. He got out a book he had kept for just this type of meeting, an English translation of French military officer Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan’s account of his time in America and his observations of native tribes. Waxell read off various “American” words (Huron and Algonquin) in alphabetical order, for such things as wood, food, and water and became convinced that these people understood his communications. Probably it was the gesticulations that accompanied the words that had more to do with the perceived understanding, since the languages and cultures of the Algonquin and Huron in eastern North America have nothing in common with the men, who were probably Aleuts. The Aleuts, native inhabitants of the Alaskan Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands, are ethnically related to the Yupik and Inuit.
The surf was now threatening the safety of the shore boat, and Waxell called to the men to return and wade back to the boat. While the two Russians began to walk back toward the boat, nine of the American men grabbed the interpreter by the arms and held him while he struggled in vain and yelled out to Waxell not to abandon him. Since he looked similar to the Americans, Waxell and Steller both speculated that perhaps they felt he belonged with the locals rather than on the boat. Waxell yelled and made motions to let him go, but they “pretended not to see me.” Then some men grasped the rope of the boat and began to haul it ashore through the rocks, “perh
aps not with evil design, but from sheer thoughtlessness, not realizing our danger, to haul the boat with its occupants ashore, where it would have been wrecked on the rocks.” Both sides were yelling, and no one understood each other. Waxell ordered two muskets to be fired in the air, and after the explosion and the echo from the cliffs, “they became so frightened that they all fell down on the ground as if hit by thunder, letting go of everything in their hands.” The Kamchadal interpreter ran into the water and climbed into the small boat, while Waxell made ready to cast off. But the anchor was stuck in the rocks. He hauled on it fruitlessly, and then he cut the rope, abandoning it, and they rowed quickly back to the ship. It was dark and nearly eight in the evening. Another storm from the south buffeted the ship during the night with pounding rain. On the shore they could see a mighty bonfire burning all night, which, Steller wrote, “kept us pondering on what had happened.” This first expression of the power of gunpowder foreshadowed a not too distant time when Russian invaders wielded explosive technology to domineer and subjugate people throughout coastal Alaska.
Island of the Blue Foxes Page 16