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.
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