- Project Runeberg -  Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of Bering Strait /
152

(1889) Author: Peter Lauridsen
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he occupied. He took to his bed, and Lieutenant Waxel
assumed charge of the vessel.” [1]

This is not writing history. It is only a series of errors
and incivilities. It was not the 18th of July that Bering
first saw land. He did not sail north from Kayak, but
southwest, and hence could not have lost his course
among islands, for here there are no islands. Nor did he
sail hither and thither, but kept the course that had
been laid out, and charted the coasts he saw in this
course. The most ridiculous part of this is what this
nautical author tells of the bay between Cape St. Elias
and Cape St. Hermogenes (Marmot Island off the coast
of Kadiak Island), for these points are farther apart
than Copenhagen and Bremen. If, according to this
writer, Bering was unpardonably stupid, he must have
been, on the other hand, astonishingly “far-sighted.”
After these statements it will surprise no one that this
author considers illness a kind of crime, and blames a
patient, sixty years of age, suffering with the scurvy,
for taking to his bed! If Mr. Dall had taken the trouble
to study the Bering literature to which he himself refers
in his bibliography of Alaska, he would have been in a
position to pass an independent opinion of the navigator,
and would certainly have escaped making this series of
stupid statements. His words now simply serve to show
how difficult it is to eradicate prejudice, and how
tenacious of life a false or biased judgment can be. Death
prevented Bering from defending and explaining his
conduct. No one has since that time sought to render
him justice. I therefore consider it my duty—even if


[1] Note 62.

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