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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),[1] a very large and
ponderous animal from eight to ten meters long and
weighing about three tons. It was related to the
dugong and lamantine of the southern seas, and the
manatus which occurs in Florida and along the Gulf
coast. Its habitat seems to have been confined to the
shores of the Commander Islands, where it was found
in great numbers. Its flesh was very excellent food.
Later it was eagerly sought after by the Siberian
hunter, whose rapacity exterminated the whole species
in less than a generation. The last specimen is said
to have been killed in 1768, and hence museums have
been very unsuccessful in procuring skeletons of the
animal. In his “Voyage of the Vega,” Nordenskjöld
attempts to show that sea-cows were seen much later,
even as late as 1854; but as he bases his assumption
chiefly on the statements of some Aleutian natives,
who, according to what Dr. Leonhard Stejneger
recently has proved, confounded the sea-cow with a
toothed whale (denticete), there seems to be no reason
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