laboured under a dysentery ever since our departure from the Sandwich
islands; he was a very hard working quiet man, and much regretted by his
messmates. He was the fourth person we lost by sickness during the voyage;
but the first who could be said, from his age and the constitutional habits
of his body, to have had on our setting out an equal chance with the rest
of his comrades; Watman, we supposed to be about sixty years of age, and
Roberts and Mr Anderson, from the decay which had evidently commenced
before we left England, could not, in all probability, under any
circumstances, have lived a greater length of time than they did.

I have already mentioned, that Captain Clerke's health continued daily to
decline, notwithstanding the salutary change of diet which the country of
Kamtschatka afforded him. The priest of Paratounca, as soon as he heard of
the infirm state he was in, supplied him every day with bread, milk, fresh
butter, and fowls, though his house was sixteen miles from the harbour
where we lay.

On our first arrival, we found the Russian hospital, which is near the town
of St Peter and St Paul, in a condition truly deplorable. All the soldiers
were, more or less, affected by the scurvy, and a great many in the last
stage of that disorder. The rest of the Russian inhabitants were also in
the same condition; and we particularly remarked, that our friend the
serjeant, by making too free with the spirits we gave him, had brought on
himself, in the course of a few days, some of the most alarming symptoms of
that malady. In this lamentable state, Captain Clerke put them all under
the care of our surgeons, and ordered a supply of sourkrout, and malt, for
wort, to be furnished for their use. It was astonishing to observe the
alteration in the figures of almost every person we met on our return from
Bolcheretsk; and I was informed by our surgeons, that they attributed their
speedy recovery principally to the effects of the sweetwort.[21]