88 VITUS BERINa. 



devastating drift-ice, rise twenty or thirty feet above 

 the average level and sweep along in their course 

 whole islands, thus filling the river-bed with trunks 

 of trees and sand, deluging the wild rock-encircled 

 valleys, so that navigation can not begin until the latter 

 part of May, again to be obstructed in August by 

 ice. The course was against the current, so the crew 

 had to walk along the rough and slippery banks and 

 tug the flat-bottomed barges up stream. In this way 

 they were usually able, during the first summer, to 

 reach the junction of the Maya and the Aldan (Ust 

 Maiskaya), where Bering built a pier and a number 

 of magazines, barracks, and winter-huts. Then the 

 next summer, the journey would be continued up the 

 Maya and into the Yudoma, which boils along through 

 an open mountain valley over rocks, stones, and water- 

 logged tree trunks. It has but two or three feet of 

 water, is full of sand-banks, with a waterfall here and 

 there and long rapids and eddies, — the so-called 

 "schiver.^' In such places the current was so strong 

 that thirty men were scarcely able to tug a boat 

 against it. Standing in water to their waists, the men 

 were, so to speak, obliged to carry the barges. The 

 water was very cauterizing, and covered their legs 

 and feet with boils and sores. The oppressive heat of 

 the day was followed by nights that were biting cold, 

 and when ncAV ice was formed, their sufferings were 

 superhuman. In this manner Yudomskaya Krest 

 (Yudoma's Cross) was reached in August of the second 

 year. This place, where since the days of the Cos- 

 sack expedition a cross had stood, Bering made an 



