Page 362

362

The rest of the crew continue down. [Among
them Goodfellow and Wilson are the
most ill perhaps because the least amenable
to treatment, the former of these poor
Goodfellow is nothing more nor less than
an absolute nuissance.]

The game season is nearer at hand and
once able to shoot seal upon the ice, I
have little fears for the recovery of a
larger portion of our party. Perhaps I am
too sanguine for it is now clear that
we three, who have so long sustained the
rest, are sinking. We cannot hold on long
Bonsall can barely walk in the morning
and his legs become stiffer daily. Petersen
gives way at the ankles, and I
suffer much from the eruption, a tormenting
and anomalous symptom which affects
eight of our sick. It has many of the
characteristics of Exanthemata but in singular
persistent varied in its phases and may
prove dangerous. All the work inboard
and outside is performed by Bonsall
and myself. The moral value of this
toilsome month is that it has taught me
sympathy with the labouring man. The fatigue
and disgust and secret trials of
the overworked brain are God knows
bad enough, but not to me more severe
than those which follow the sick and jaded
body to a sleepless bed. [Disease will
always exist in communities, as well
with the body laboured as the mind
laboured. I can now understand the
feelings of a man gaining his bread by
the sweat of his brow, and seeing ahead
the day when] I have realized what is meant by the sweat of the brow, and can feel how painful must [be?] do
earnings to him to whom the grass hopper has [shall] become
a [brethren?].