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612 LE ROY’S NARRATIVE OF FOUR RUSSIAN SAILORS.
I come now to the return of our mariners: they arrived fafe at Archangel the twen-
ty-eighth of September 1749, after, as I have before noticed, having pafled fix years and
three months in this dreadful feclufion.
‘The inftant of meeting of the pilot and his wife was threatened with a melancholy
cataftrophe. She was ftanding on the bridge as the veffel arrived: fhe recognized her
hufband ; fhe loved him molt fincerely; fhe had fo long bewailed him as dead; but
now, inconfiderate, without patience to wait till the fhip came to the pier, fhe threw her-
felf forward to clafp him in her arms, fhe fell into the water, and with difficulty was
faved from perifhing.
i muft now in conclufion remark, that thefe men who had lived fo long without
bread, ate it now with reluctance. ‘They complain of its pufiing them out. ‘The fame
objection in fhort they make to all forts of drink, and now make rain water alone their
beverage.
APPENDIX.
Tue learned man, which I mentioned in my narrative I had confulted refpetting the
reckoning of our iflanders, concerning the rifing and fetting of the fun, and whatever
related to the courfe of that planet, was Profeflor D. Krazzenftein, member of the
Imperial Academy of Wiffencfhaften at Peterfburg. ‘This is the tranflation of the letter
which he wrote to me on this fubject.
“© I have to apologize to you tor having fo long delayed to fend my opinion on the
queftions refpeGting which you wrote to me: the time which the calculations required,
and the long continuance of the rains, have prevented my doing fo before.
*« After confidering the matter with great attention, I find that the circumftance
which Profeflor Grifchon adduces as a proof of the exactitude of the reckoning of our
iflanders, namely, the two days later reckoning than that of the mariners who brought
them from the ifland; has a direct contrary tendency. ;
‘* Let any reckon the 29th of February in a leap-year, this day will be reckoned by
thofe who have no knowledge of the interpolation of a day, as the 1ft of March; and
after two fuch years, what by one will be counted the 29th of February, will by the
other be efteemed the 2d of March; hence it follows, that if our iflanders had ne-
gleéted to attend to the biflextiles, 1744 and 1748, they would confequently have
reckoned that the 17th of Auguft, which their deliverers called the 15th. It is alfo
evident, that, if they paid attention to the leap-years, they made a miftake of two days,
and if they did not allow for them, they erred in computation by four, days: this can ~
appear but trifling, if we confider the dark and cloudy feafon of winter, where they
were without means of eftimating the regular day. Furthermore, in that year when
they noticed the entire difappearance of the fun on the 26th of October, they muft have
erred in. their time, by being ten days in advance, or we muft neceflarily prefuppofe,.
that they were in latitude 74° 21’, which can hardly be imagined. Bears’ Ifland is in.
that latitude, where they muft in fuch cafe have been; which is not probable.
“* If their place of refidence was in latitude 77° and a half, as laid down upon the
chart, the fun would then fhine for the firft time the 4th of February: from the 11th
of April to the 8th of Auguft, it would be continually above the horizon, and finally,,
on the 16th of October it would wholly difappear.
** Had they been on Bears’ Ifland, they would have feen the fun the firft time on
the 28th of January: the fhining of the fun above the horizon would have continued
from the 2oth of April until the 31ft of July, and on the 23d of October it would have.
difappeared entirely.
7 “ From
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