Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter XIX.
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sent out one party to hunt and another to carry wood
from the strand. In this way they succeeded in struggling
through the winter, which on Bering Island is more
characterized by raging snowstorms (poorgas) than severe cold.
Meanwhile, death made sad havoc among them. Before
they reached Bering Island, their dead numbered twelve,
the majority of whom died during the last days of the
voyage. During the landing and immediately afterwards
nine more were carried away. The next death did not
occur until November 22. It was the excellent and
worthy mate, the seventy-year-old Andreas Hesselberg,
who had plowed the sea for fifty years, and whose advice,
had it been heeded, would have saved the expedition.
Then came no less than six deaths in rapid succession;
and finally in December the Commander and another
officer died. The last death occurred January 6, 1742.
In all, thirty-one men out of seventy-seven died on this
ill-starred expedition.
When Bering exerted his last powers to prevent the
stranding of the St. Peter, he struggled for life. Before
leaving Okhotsk he had contracted a malignant ague,
which diminished his powers of resistance, and on the
voyage to America scurvy was added to this. His sixty
years of age, his heavy build, the trials and tribulations
he had experienced, his subdued courage, and his
disposition to quiet and inactivity, all tended to aggravate this
disease; but he would nevertheless, says Steller, without
doubt have recovered if he had gotten back to Avacha,
where he could have obtained proper nourishment and
enjoyed the comfort of a warm room. In a sandpit on
the coast of Bering Island, his condition was hopeless.
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