e has waged among the finical academists, where the
Serdze Kamen of this trip really was; the Russian observations varying
greatly owing to fog and rude instruments. _Lauridsen_ quarrels with
_Mueller_ on this score. _Mueller_ was one of the theorists whose
wrongheadedness misled Bering.

[9] It was in 1730 that Gvozdef's report of a strange land between 65
degrees and 66 degrees became current. Whether this land was America,
Gamaland, or Asia, the savants could not know.

[10] It is from the works of _Gmelin_, _Mueller_, and _Steller_,
scientists named to accompany the expedition, that the most connected
accounts are obtained. The "menagerie," some one has called this
collection of scientists.

[11] Many of the workmen died of their hardships at this stage of the
journey.

[12] Berg says Bering's two sons, Thomas and Unos, were also with him
in Siberia.

[13] _Sauer_ relates this incident.

[14] See _Mueller_, p. 93, 1764 edition: "The men, notwithstanding want,
misery, sickness, were obliged to work continually in the cold and wet,
and the sickness was so dreadful that the sailors who governed the
rudder were obliged to be led to it by others, who could hardly walk.
They durst not carry much sail, because there was nobody to lower them
in case of need, and they were so thin a violent wind would have torn
them to pieces. The rain now changed to hail and snow."

{37}

CHAPTER II

1741-1743

CONTINUATION OF BERING, THE DANE

Frightful Sufferings of the Castaways on the Commander Islands--The
Vessel smashed in a Winter Gale, the Sick are dragged for Refuge into
Pits of Sand--Here, Bering perishes, and the Crew Winter--The Consort
Ship under Chirikoff Ambushed--How the Castaways reach Home

Without pilot or captain, the _St. Peter_ drifted to the swirling current
of the sea along a high, rocky, forbidding coast where beetling
precipices towered sheer two thousand feet above a white fret of reefs,
that gave the ocean the appearance of a ploughed field. The sick crawled
mutely back to their berths. Bering was past caring what came and only
semiconscious. Waxel, who had compelled the crew to vote for landing
here under the impression born of his own despair,--that this was the
coast of Avacha Bay, Kamchatka,--saw with dismay in the shores gliding
past the keel momentary proofs that he was wrong. Poor Waxel had fought
desperately against the depression that precedes scurvy; but now, with a
dum