THE VARIOUS EXPEDITIONS. 167 



much worse. Poor water, lack of bread and spirits, the 

 cold and wet, vermin and anxiety, undermined the last 

 remnants of their powers of resistance. On the 19th the 

 grenadier Kisseloff, on the 20th the servant Charitonoff, 

 and on the 21st the soldier Luka Savjaloff, died. Even 

 men apparently well were unable to stand at their nosts 

 from sheer want and exhaustion. 



Then the water supply threatened to give out. They 

 had but fifteen casks of water, a part of which was very 

 poor. Waxel was again thinking of searching for land 

 toward the north, when a strong wind carried them so far 

 westward that they supposed they had passed all traces of 

 American regions. They then determined to keep their 

 course on the 52° of latitude, but on the following day, to 

 their great astonishment, they sighted the Aleutian Isl- 

 ands and made some new discoveries. On October 25, at 

 a distance of 8^ geographical miles toward the northwest, 

 they saw a high, snow-capped island, which they called 

 St. Marcus. By an observation at noon its latitude was 

 found to be 50° 50', but as this island is our Amchitka, 

 and as its southern extremity, according to Admiral Sary- 

 cheff, is in a latitude of 51° 35', it is evident that the St. 

 Peter's determinations of latitude were constantly from 

 one-half to three-fourths of a degree less than the true 

 latitude. Later" this fact had an extremely unfortunate 

 effect on their resolutions. On October 28, Kiska, which 

 Bering called St. Stephen, was discovered, besides three 

 (in reality four) smaller islands east of it, and, carried 

 along toward the north by a southwesterly wind, they 

 sighted, on the morning of the 29th, some low islands, 

 which are supposed to have been the present Semichi 



