Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter XVII.
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I should seem to be yielding to the biographer’s
besetting sin—to produce everything that can be said in
Bering’s defense.
In the first place, then, it must be remembered that
on the 21st of July Bering had provisions left for no more
than three months, and that these were not good and
wholesome. His crew, and he himself, were already
suffering from scurvy to such an extent that two weeks later
one-third of them were on the sick-list. Furthermore,
he was over fifty-six degrees of longitude from his nearest
port of refuge, with a crew but little accustomed to the
sea. The American coast in that latitude was not,
according to Bering’s judgment, nor is it according to our
present knowledge, in any way a fit place to winter, and
besides, he knew neither the sea nor its islands and depths,
its currents and prevailing winds. All this could not but
urge him to make no delay. And, in fact, Steller himself
expressly says that it was a series of such considerations
that determined Bering’s conduct. “Pusillanimous
homesickness” can scarcely have had any influence on
a man who from his youth had roamed about in the
world and lived half a generation in the wilds of
Siberia. “The good Commander,” thus Steller expresses
himself, “was far superior to all the other officers in
divining the future, and in the cabin he once said to myself
and Mr. Plenisner: ‘We think now that we have found
everything, and many are pregnant with great
expectations; but they do not consider where we have landed,
how far we are from home, and what yet may befall us.
Who knows but what we may meet trade winds that
will prevent our return? We are unacquainted with the
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