During the long run to New Britain, the frightful effects of bad provisions were made painfully manifest, for the salt meat had long been decayed, the bread was full of maggots, and the water intolerably putrid. The scurvy began to cut off four and five men a day. Cries and groans were incessantly heard in all parts of the ship: those who were well fainted at the stench of the carcasses. Some were reduced to skeletons, so that the skin cleaved to their bones, while others swelled to a monstrous and disgusting size. The journal says that "an anabaptist of twenty-five years old called out continually to be baptized, and when told, with a sneer, that there was no parson on board, became quiet, and died with great resignation." At last the high land of New Britain put an end to their miseries,—for which there was no cure on earth except fresh meat, green vegetables, and pure water.
The expedition intrusted to Roggewein having proved abortive by the failure to find a Southern continent, we shall follow his adventures no farther. It will suffice to say that his ships were confiscated at Batavia by the Dutch East India Company,—a proceeding which the West India Company resented by commencing an action for damages. After a long litigation, the States-General decreed that the former Company should furnish the latter with two ships better than those confiscated, should refund the full value of their cargoes, should pay the wages of both crews to the day of their return to Holland, together with the costs, and a heavy fine by way of punishment for having so manifestly abused their authority.
We come now to the first expedition at sea made by Russia for the purpose of extending and promoting the science of geography. Vitus Behring was a Dane in the Russian service, having been tempted by the encouragements held out to foreign mariners by Peter the Great. He had risen to the rank of captain in 1725, when the Empress Catherine, who was anxious to promote discovery in the Northeast of Asia and to settle the question, then doubtful, as to the existence of a strait between Asia and America, appointed him to the command of an expedition fitted out for that purpose. During a period of seven years, having travelled overland to Kamschatka, he explored rivers, sounded and surveyed the coasts, and sailed as far to the northward as the season and the strength of his very inferior boats would permit. In 1732, he was made captain-commander, and the next year was ordered to conduct an expedition fitted out on a very extensive scale for purposes of discovery. In 1740, he reached Okhotsk, where vessels had previously been built for him. He sailed for Awatska Bay, where he founded the settlement of Petropaulowski, known in English as the Harbor of Peter and Paul. Sailing to the northward, he landed upon the American coast, giving name to Mount St. Elias, and then, returning to the westward, struck the continent of Asia, finding a strait fifty miles wide between the two continents at the point where they approach each other the nearest. This, in honor of its discoverer, is called Behring's Strait.
The following description of this scene of desolation, as it first broke upon Behring's eye, is due to the imagination of Eugene Sue:—"The month of September," he says, "is at its close. The equinox has come with darkness, and sullen night will soon displace the short and gloomy days of the Pole. The sky, of a dark violet color, is feebly lighted by a sun which dispenses no heat, and whose white disk, scarcely elevated above the horizon, pales before the dazzling brightness of the snow. To the north, this desert is bounded by a coast bristling with black and gigantic rocks. At the foot of their Titanic piles lies motionless the vast ice-bound ocean. To the east appears a line of darkish green, whence seem to creep forth numerous white and glassy icebergs. This is the channel which now bears the name of Behring. Beyond it, and towering above it, are the vast granitic masses of Cape Prince of Wales, the extreme point of North America. These desolate latitudes are beyond the pale of the habitable world. The piercing cold rends the very stones, cleaves the trees, and bursts the ground, which groans in producing the germs of its icy herbage. A few black pines, the growth of centuries, pointing their distorted tops in different directions of the solitude, like crosses in a churchyard, have been torn up and hurled around in confusion by the storm. The raging hurricane, not content with uprooting trees, drives mountains of ice before it, and dashes them, with the crash of thunder, the one against the other.
"And now a night without twilight has succeeded to the day,—dark, dark night! The heavy cupola of the sky is of so deep a blue that it appears black, and the Polar stars are lost in the depths of an obscurity which seems palpable to the touch. Silence reigns alone. But suddenly a feeble glimmer appears in the horizon. At first it is softly brilliant, blue as the light which precedes the rising of the moon; then the effulgence increases, expands, and assumes a roseate hue. Strange and confused sounds are heard,—sounds like the flight of huge night birds as they flap their wings heavily over the plain. These are the forerunners of one of those imposing phenomena which strike with awe all animated nature. An aurora borealis, that magnificent spectacle of the Polar regions, is at hand. In the horizon there appears a semicircle of dazzling brightness. From the centre of this glowing hemisphere radiate blazing columns and jets of light, rising to measureless heights and illumining heaven, earth, and sea. They glide along the snows of the desert, empurpling the blue tops of the ice-mountains and tinging with a deepened red the tall black rocks of the two continents. Having thus reached the fulness of its splendor, the aurora grows gradually pale, and diffuses its effulgence in a luminous mist. At this moment, from the fantastic illusions of the mirage, frequent in those latitudes, the American coast, though separated from that of Asia by the interposition of an arm of the sea, suddenly approaches so near it that a bridge might be thrown from one world to the other. Did human beings inhabit those regions and breathe the pale-blue vapors which pervade them, they might almost converse across the narrow inlet which serves to divide the continents. But now the aurora fades away, and the deceptive mirage sinks back into the shadowy realms from whence it came. Fifty miles of sullen waters roll again between the continents, and a three months' night settles over the ghastly and appalling scene."
MIRAGE AT BEHRING'S STRAITS.
It is not improbable that Behring passed to the north of East Cape, the promontory on the Asiatic side, into the Arctic Ocean beyond. He was soon compelled to return, owing to the disabled condition of his vessel, which was wrecked upon an island on the 3d of November, 1741. This island, which was little better than a naked rock, afforded neither food nor shelter; and Behring, suffering from the scurvy and sinking from disappointment, lay down in a cleft of the rock to die. The sand collected and drifted about him, half burying him alive. He would not suffer it to be removed, as it afforded him a grateful warmth. He died in this wretched condition on the 8th of December. The next summer, the few of his crew who survived the winter built a vessel from the timber of the wreck: in this they reached Kamschatka and made known the miserable fate of their commander.