Note 192 — INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Still, with all the means employed to keep themselves in health,—and of these warm bathing was no inconsiderable one,—it would be wrong to imagine that they were able to preserve themselves from that dreaded scourge of Arctic navigators, the scurvy. Lütke observes192 that “it is most remarkable that in the account of their long sufferings this disease is not once mentioned, and that of seventeen men only two died in Novaya Zemlya.” But it is from having known only the abbreviated translations of Gerrit de Veer’s journal that the Russian admiral has been led to view the position of those unfortunate men in this favourable light. For we see from De Veer’s narrative,193 that as early as the 26th of January, 1597, when one of the crew died, he had even then long lain seriously ill: and two days later it is expressly stated,194 that, from their having “long time sitten without motion, several had thereby fallen sick of the scurvy.” Indeed, when we consider what they had to undergo for six months, during which period we find it positively recorded that they suffered from the scurvy, until on the 28th of July they first met with a remedy,195—and how long previously the disease had shown itself among them cannot be said,—it is almost miraculous that only five (not two) out of the seventeen should have fallen victims to it.