The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume IINordenskiöld, A. E. (Adolf Erik)
History
The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II
Nordenskiöld, A. E. (Adolf Erik)
Arctic regions -- Discovery and exploration; Northeast Passage; Vega (Ship)
On the 28/17th April, 1769, there was a storm from the south-west,
with mist, rain, and hail as large as half a bullet. On the 2nd
June/22nd May a dreadful wind raged from the north-west, bringing
from the high mountains a "sharp smoke-like air,"--it was certainly
a _foehn_ wind. The painful, depressing effect of this wind is
generally known from Switzerland and from north-western Greenland.
At the latter place it rushes right down with excessive violence
from the ice-desert of the interior. But far from on that account
bringing cold with it, the temperature suddenly rises above the
freezing-point, the snow disappears as if by magic through melting
and evaporation, and men and animals feel themselves suffering from
the sudden change in the weather. Such winds besides occur
everywhere in the Polar regions in the neighbourhood of high
mountains, and it is probably on their account that a stay in the
hill-enclosed kettle-valleys is in Greenland considered to be very
unhealthy and to lead to attacks of scurvy among the inhabitants.
The crew remained during the winter whole days, indeed whole weeks
in succession, in their confined dwellings, carefully made tight,
without taking any regular exercise in the open air. We can easily
understand from this that they could not escape scurvy, by which
most of them appear to have been attacked, and of which seven died,
among them Tschirakin. It is surprising that any one of them could
survive with such a mode of life during the dark Polar night. The
brewing of _quass_, the daily baking of bread, and perhaps even the
vapour-baths, mainly contributed to this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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