Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter IX.
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devastating drift-ice, rise twenty or thirty feet above
the average level and sweep along in their course
whole islands, thus filling the river-bed with trunks
of trees and sand, deluging the wild rock-encircled
valleys, so that navigation can not begin until the latter
part of May, again to be obstructed in August by
ice. The course was against the current, so the crew
had to walk along the rough and slippery banks and
tug the flat-bottomed barges up stream. In this way
they were usually able, during the first summer, to
reach the junction of the Maya and the Aldan (Ust
Maiskaya), where Bering built a pier and a number
of magazines, barracks, and winter-huts. Then the
next summer, the journey would be continued up the
Maya and into the Yudoma, which boils along through
an open mountain valley over rocks, stones, and
waterlogged tree trunks. It has but two or three feet of
water, is full of sand-banks, with a waterfall here and
there and long rapids and eddies, — the so-called
“schiver.” In such places the current was so strong
that thirty men were scarcely able to tug a boat
against it. Standing in water to their waists, the men
were, so to speak, obliged to carry the barges. The
water was very cauterizing, and covered their legs
and feet with boils and sores. The oppressive heat of
the day was followed by nights that were biting cold,
and when new ice was formed, their sufferings were
superhuman. In this manner Yudomskaya Krest
(Yudoma’s Cross) was reached in August of the second
year. This place, where since the days of the
Cossack expedition a cross had stood, Bering made an
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