RUSSIAN EXPLORATIONS, 1725-1743.
VITUS BERING:
THE DISCOVERER OF BERING STRAIT.

BY

PETER LAURIDSEN,

Member of the Council of the Royal Danish Geographical Society,
Editor of Jens Munk's "Navigatio Septentrionalis."

Revised by the Author, and Translated from the Danish by

JULIUS E. OLSON,

Assistant Professor of Scandinavian Languages in the University of Wisconsin.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION BY

FREDERICK SCHWATKA,

Medallist of the Paris Geographical Society, and of the Imperial Geographical Society of Russia: Honorary Member of the Bremen Geographical Society, and the Swiss Geographical Society of Geneva; Corresponding Member of the Italian Geographical Society, etc., etc.; Author of "Along Alaska's Great River," etc., etc.

CHICAGO:
S. C. GRIGGS & COMPANY,
1889.

COPYRIGHT, 1889,
BY S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.

PRESS OF KNIGHT & LEONARD CO.
CHICAGO.

[CONTENTS.]

[INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.]

A biography of the great Bering is of especial interest to American readers desiring an accurate history of a country that has recently come into our possession, and the adjoining regions where most of the geographical investigations of the intrepid Danish-Russian explorer were made. The thorough, concise, and patient work done by Mr. Lauridsen is deserving of world-wide commendation, while the translation into the language of our land by Professor Olson of the University of Wisconsin puts students of American historical geography under a debt for this labor of love rather than remuneration that cannot be easily paid, and which is not common in our country. It is a matter of no small national pride that the translation into the English language of a work so near American geographical interests should have been done by an American, rather than emanate from the Hakluyt Society or other British sources, from which we usually derive such valuable translations and compilations of old explorations and the doings of the first explorers.

The general American opinion regarding Bering is probably somewhat different from that on the continent which gave him birth and a patron government to carry out his gigantic and immortal plans; or, better speaking, it was different during the controversy in the past over the value and authenticity of the great explorer's works, for European opinion of Bering has slowly been more and more favorable to him, until it has reached the maximum and complete vindication in the admirable labors of Lauridsen, whose painstaking researches in the only archives where authentic data of the doings of the daring Dane could be found, has left no ground for those critics to stand upon, who have censured Peter the Great's selection of an oriental explorer. In short, America has always respected Bering as a great explorer, and oftentimes heralded him as one of the highest of heroes, whatever may have been the varying phases of European thought on the subject; and the reasons therefor, I think, are two-fold. In the first place, the continent which Bering first separated from the old world is yet a new country. Since its discovery, not only exploration, but commercial exploration, or pioneering as we call it, has been going on, and in this every one has taken his part or mingled often with those who have. Presidents who were pioneers, have been contemporaries with our times, while those who have struggled on the selvage of civilization are numerous among us, and their adventures as narrated in books are familiar stories to our ears. Such a people, I believe, am much less liable to listen to the labored logic of a critic against a man who carried his expedition six thousand miles across a wilderness and launched it on the inhospitable shores of an unknown sea, to solve a problem that has borne them fruit, than others not similarly situated would be. While the invariable rule has been that where the path-finder and critic—unless the critic has been an explorer in the same field—have come in collision, the latter has always gone to the wall, it is easy to see that with a jury that have themselves lived amidst similar, though possibly slighter, frontier fortunes, such a verdict is more readily reached.

The other reason, which is not so commendable, is that few Americans at large have interested themselves in the discussion, or in fact knew much about it. True, the criticisms on the Eastern continent have been re-echoed on this side of the water, and even added to, but, they have created no general impression worth recording as such in a book that will undoubtedly have far wider circulation than the discussion has ever had, unless I have misjudged the temper of the American people to desire information on just such work as Bering has done, and which for the first time is presented to them in anything like an authentic way by Professor Olson's translation of Mr. Lauridsen's work. I do not wish to be understood that we as a nation have been wholly indifferent to Bering and the discussion of his claims. Far from it. It has rather been that in invading the Bering world their disposition has led them to view the solid ground on which he made his mark, rather than the clouds hovering above, and which this work dissipates. It is rather of that character of ignorance—if so strong a word is justifiable—that is found here in the persistent misspelling of the great explorer's name and the bodies of water which have transmitted it to posterity so well, although the authority—really the absolute demand, if correctness is desired—for the change from Behring to Bering has been well known to exist for a number of years, and is now adopted in even our best elementary geographies. While the animalish axiom that "ignorance is bliss" is probably never true, there may be cases where it is apparently fortunate, and this may be so in that Americans in being seemingly apathetic have really escaped a discussion which after all has ended in placing the man considered in about the same status that they always assumed he had filled. One might argue that it would have been better for Americans, therefore, if they had been presented with a simple and authentic biography of the immortal Danish-Russian, rather than with a book that is both a biography and a defense, but Lauridsen's work after all is the best, I think all will agree, as no biography of Bering could be complete without some account of that part in which he had no making and no share, as well as that better part which he chronicled with his own brain and brawn.

I doubt yet if Americans will take very much interest in the dispute over Bering's simple claims in which he could take no part; but that this book, which settles them so clearly, will be welcomed by the reading classes of a nation that by acquisition in Alaska has brought them so near the field of the labor of Bering, I think there need not be the slightest fear. It is one of the most important links yet welded by the wisdom of man which can be made into a chain of history for our new acquisition whose history is yet so imperfect, and will remain so, until Russian archives are placed in the hands of those they consider fair-minded judges, as in the present work.

On still broader grounds, it is to be hoped that this work will meet with American success, that it may be an entering wedge to that valuable literature of geographical research and exploration, which from incompatibility of language and other causes has never been fully or even comprehensively opened to English speaking people. It has been well said by one who has opportunities to fairly judge that "it has been known by scientists for some time that more valuable investigation was buried from sight in the Russian language than in any or all others. Few can imagine what activity in geographical, statistical, astronomical, and other research has gone on in the empire of the Czar. It is predicted that within ten years more students will take up the Russian language than those of other nations of Eastern Europe, simply as a necessity. This youngest family of the Aryans is moving westward with its ideas and literature, as well as its population and empire. There are no better explorers and no better recorders of investigations." It is undoubtedly a field in which Americans can reap a rich reward of geographical investigation. There is an idea among some, and even friends of Russia, that their travelers and explorers have not done themselves justice in recording their doings, but this in the broad sense is not true. Rather they have been poor chroniclers for the public; but their official reports, hidden away in government archives, are rich in their thorough investigations, oftentimes more nearly perfect and complete than the equivalents in our own language, where it takes no long argument to prove that great attention given to the public and popular account, has been at the expense of the similar qualities in the official report; while many expeditions, American and British, have not been under official patronage at all, which has seldom been the case with Russian research. As already noted, the bulk of similar volumes from other languages and other archives into the English has come from Great Britain; but probably from the unfortunate bitter antagonism between the two countries which has created an apathy in one and a suspicion in the other that they will not be judged in an unprejudiced way, Russia has not got a fair share of what she has really accomplished geographically translated into our tongue. It is through America, an unprejudiced nation, that this could be remedied, if a proper interest is shown, and which will probably be determined, in a greater or less degree, by the reception of this book here, although it comes to us in the roundabout way of the Danish language.

Frederick Schwatka.

[TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.]

In placing before the American public this book on Vitus Bering, I desire to express my cordial thanks to those who by word and deed have assisted me. I am especially grateful to Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, who, in the midst of pressing literary labors consequent on his recent explorations among the cave and cliff dwellers of the Sierra Madre Mountains, has been so exceedingly kind as to write an introduction to the American edition of this work. I feel confident that the introductory words of this doughty explorer will secure for Bering that consideration from the American people to which he is fairly entitled.

I find it a pleasant day to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Leonhard Stejneger of the Smithsonian Institution, who has sent me some valuable and interesting notes to the chapter on "The Stay on Bering Island" (Chapter XIX). Dr. Stejneger's notes are of especial interest, for in the years 1882-'84 he spent eighteen months on Bering Island in the service of the United States government, the object of his expedition being to study the general natural history of the island, to collect specimens of all kinds, but especially to search for remains of the sea-cow. He wished also to identify the places mentioned by Steller, the famous naturalist of the Bering expedition, in order to compare his description with the localities as they present themselves to-day, and to visit the places where Bering's vessel was wrecked, where the ill-fated expedition wintered, and where Steller made his observations on the sea-cow. The results of Dr. Stejneger's investigations have been published in "Proceedings of the United States National Museum" and in various American and European scientific journals.

I am also under obligation to Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson, Ex-United States Minister to Denmark, through whom I have been enabled to make this an authorized edition, and to Reuben G. Thwaites, Secretary of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, and Frederick J. Turner, Assistant Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin, for valuable criticism and suggestions.

In regard to the orthography of Russian and Siberian names, I wish to say that I have endeavored to follow American writers that advocate a rational simplification. W. H. Dall, author of "Alaska and its Resources," says on this point: "From ignorance of the true phonetic value of the Russian compound consonants, and from literal transcription, instead of phonetic translation, of the German rendering of Russian and native names, much confusion has arisen. Many writers persistently represent the third letter of the Russian alphabet by w, writing Romanow instead of Romanoff, etc. The twenty-fifth letter is also frequently rendered tsch instead of ch soft, as in church, which fully represents it in English. It is as gross an error to spell Kamchatka for instance, Kamtschatka, as it would be for a foreigner to represent the English word church by tschurtsch, and so on." From this it would seem that the Germanized forms of these names are incorrect, as well as needlessly forbidding in appearance. It is, moreover, due to German writers that Bering's name has been burdened with a superfluous letter. Facsimiles of his autograph, one of which may be seen by referring to Map I. in the Appendix, prove incontestably that he spelled his name without an h.

Although Mr. Lauridsen's book is essentially a defense of Vitus Bering, written especially for the student of history and historical geography, it nevertheless contains several chapters of thrilling interest to the general reader. The closing chapters, for instance, give, not only a reliable account of the results of Bering's voyage of discovery in the North Pacific, and valuable scientific information concerning the remarkable animal life on Bering Island, where, before Bering's frail ship was dashed upon its shores, no human foot had trod, but they also portray in vivid colors the tragic events that brought this greatest of geographical enterprises to a close.

The regions to which Bering's last labors gave Russia the first title are at the present time the object of much newspaper comment. His last expedition, the few survivors of which brought home costly skins that evinced the great wealth of the newly discovered lands, opened up to the Russian fur-hunter an El Dorado that still continues to be a most profitable field of pursuit, now vigilantly watched by the jealous eyes of rival nations.

Julius E. Olson.

Madison, Wis.

[AUTHOR'S PREFACE.]

Through the patronage of the Hielmstierne-Rosencrone Institution, obtained in the summer of 1883, I was enabled to spend some time among the archives and libraries in St. Petersburg, to prepare myself for undertaking this work on Vitus Bering. I very soon, however, encountered obstacles which unassisted I should not have been able to surmount; for, contrary to my expectations, all the original manuscripts and archives pertaining to the history of Bering were written in Russian, and the latter in such difficult language that none but native palæographers could read them.

I should for this reason have been compelled to return without having accomplished anything, had I not in two gentlemen, Admiral Th. Wessalgo and Mr. August Thornam of the telegraph department, found all the assistance that I needed. The Admiral is director of the department of hydrography, and has charge of the magnificent archives of the Admiralty. He is very familiar with the history of the Russian fleet, and he gave me, not only excellent and exhaustive bibliographical information, besides putting at my disposal the library of the department, but also had made for me copies of various things that were not easily accessible. He has, moreover, since my return been unwearied in furnishing me such information from the Russian archives as I have desired. For all of this kindness, enhanced by the Admiral's flattering remarks about Denmark and the Danes, I find it a pleasant duty to express my warmest thanks. To Mr. Thornam I am no less indebted. Notwithstanding his laborious duties in the central telegraph office of St. Petersburg, he found it possible week after week, often eight or ten hours out of the twenty-four, to assist me in translating the vast materials.

Besides this, I derived much benefit from his comprehensive knowledge of Siberia, obtained on travels in the same regions where Bering had been. He has had the kindness to examine the collection of charts and maps in both the Admiralty and Imperial libraries, and secure for me some valuable copies. He has also, at my request, examined a series of articles in periodicals containing notices of Bering's geographical enterprise.

It is only by means of this valuable assistance that I have succeeded in basing this biographical sketch on Russian literature, and putting it, as I hope, on a par with what has been written on this subject by Russian authors.

Of the many others that in one way or another have seconded my efforts in giving as valuable a biography of my renowned fellow-countryman as possible, I owe special thanks—not to mention the Hielmstierne-Rosencrone Institution—to Mr. Hegel, the veteran publisher, Col. Hoskier, Dr. Karl Verner, instructor in Sclavonic languages at the University of Copenhagen, who has examined some very difficult archival matter for me, Professor Alexander Vasilievich Grigorieff, Secretary of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, and to Mr. E. W. Dahlgren, Secretary of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography. P. L.

[PART I.]
BERING'S FIRST EXPEDITION.

[CHAPTER I.]
RUSSIA AND ENGLAND IN THE WORK OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION.—VITUS BERING'S RANK AS AN EXPLORER.

In the great work of Arctic exploration done during the last two centuries, it was first Russia and later England that took the lead, and to these two nations we are principally indebted for our knowledge of Arctic continental coast-lines. The English expeditions were undertaken with better support, and under circumstances better designed to attract public attention. They have, moreover, been excellently described, and are consequently well known. But in the greatness of the tasks undertaken, in the perseverance of their leaders, in difficulties, dangers, and tragic fates, Russian explorations stand worthily at their side. The geographical position of the Russians, their dispersion throughout the coldest regions of the earth, their frugal habits, remarkable power of foresight, and their adventurous spirit, make them especially fitted for Arctic explorations. Hence, as early as the first half of the eighteenth century, they accomplished for Asia what the English not until a hundred years later succeeded in doing for the other side of the earth,—namely, the charting of the polar coasts.

In this work the Russians introduced the system of coasting and sledging into the service of Arctic expeditions, and it is only through a systematic development of these means that western Europe has been enabled to celebrate its most brilliant triumphs in the Arctic regions, and to succeed in getting farther than did the navigators of the seventeenth century. The history of Russian polar explorations has a series of proud names, which lack only the pen of a Sherard Osborn to shine by the side of Franklin and McClure, and it redounds to the honor of Denmark that one of the first and greatest of these men was a Dane,—that the most brilliant chapter in the history of Russian explorations is due to the initiative and indefatigable energy of Vitus Bering. In the service of Peter the Great he successfully doubled the northeastern peninsula of Asia, and after his return he made a plan for the exploration of the whole Northeast passage from the White Sea to Japan. Although he succumbed in this undertaking, he lived long enough to see his gigantic plans approach realization.

Bering was buried on an island in the Pacific, amid the scenes of his labors, under that sand-barrow which had been his death-bed. For many generations only a plain wooden cross marked his resting-place, and as for his fame, it has been as humble and modest as his head-board. His labors belonged to a strange people who had but little sympathy for the man. His own countrymen, among whom he might have found this sympathetic interest, knew his work but very imperfectly. Not until after the lapse of a century did he find a careful biographer, and even within comparatively recent years the great scientist Von Baer has found it necessary to defend him against misunderstandings and petty attacks.

Danish literature contains nothing of moment concerning him, for the two treatises which several generations ago were published by M. Hallager and Odin Wolff, are merely scanty extracts from G. F. Müller's historical works. In the following pages, therefore, relying not only upon Russian, but also upon West European literature for information, we desire to erect to him a monument by giving a short account of his life and work, sketching at the same time a chapter of geographical history which is lacking neither in importance nor in interest.

[CHAPTER II.]
BERING'S NATIVITY.—NORWEGIANS AND DANES IN THE SERVICE OF PETER THE GREAT.—FOUNDING OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY.

Vitus Bering was a son of Jonas Svendsen and his second wife, Anna Bering of Horsens, at which place he was born in the summer of 1681. On the maternal side he descended from the distinguished Bering family, which during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries flourished in various parts of Denmark, and included a very respectable number of ministers and judicial officers.[1]

Our hero passed his childhood in a Christian family of culture in the Jutland seaport town of his birth. Here for a series of years his father filled several positions of trust, and was closely associated with the leading men of the place, as his wife's sister, Margaret Bering, had married two consecutive mayors. He was, however, far from being considered well-to-do. He had many children. One of his sons had caused him much trouble and expense, and was finally sent to the East Indies. In the probate record of his estate, made in 1719, there is a deed of conveyance from himself and wife in which the following appears: "We are old, miserable, and decrepit people, in no way able to help ourselves. Our property consists of the old dilapidated home and the furniture thereto belonging, which is of but little value." It was his share of this inheritance, with accrued interest, all amounting to 140 rigsdaler, that Vitus Bering later presented to his native town to be used for the benefit of the poor.

From inclination, and forced by the circumstances of his humble home, Bering went to sea, and on the long expeditions that he made, he developed into an able seaman. From an East India expedition in 1703 he came to Amsterdam, where he made the acquaintance of Admiral Cruys, a native of Norway. Soon afterwards, at the age of twenty-two, he joined a Russian fleet as a sub-lieutenant. What Norwegian and Danish seamen accomplished at this period in the service of Russia, has been almost entirely forgotten. In the company of intelligent foreigners that Czar Peter employed for the transformation of his kingdom, the Danish-Norse contingent occupies a prominent place. This is due principally to Peter himself, and was a result of his experiences in Holland. After having, on his first extensive foreign trip, learned the art of ship-building,—not in Zaandam, as it is usually stated, but at the docks of the East India Company in Amsterdam,—he was much dissatisfied with the empirical method which the Hollanders used, and he wrote to Voronetz, his own ship-yard, that the Dutch ship-builders there should no longer be permitted to work independently, but be placed under the supervision of Danes or Englishmen.

Peter retained his high regard for Danish-Norse ship-building during his whole life, and it was on this account that Danes and Norwegians were enabled to exert so great an influence in St. Petersburg. This is the reason, too, that Danish-Norse[2] seamen were received so kindly in Russia even long after the death of the great Czar.

Next to Peter, Norwegians and Danes had the greatest share in the founding of the Russian fleet, and among them the place of honor belongs to the Norseman Cornelius Cruys, who in 1697 was assistant master of ordnance in the Dutch navy, where he was held in high regard as a ship-builder, a cartographer, and as a man well versed in everything pertaining to the equipment of a fleet. Peter made him his vice-admiral, and assigned to him the technical control of the fleet, the building of new vessels, their equipment, and, above all, the task of supplying them with West European officers.

Weber assigns Cruys a place in the first rank among those foreigners to whom Russia owes much of her development, and remarks that it was he, "the incomparable master of ordnance, who put the Russian fleet upon its keel and upon the sea." He belonged to the fashionable circles of St. Petersburg, owned a large and beautiful palace on the Neva, where now tower the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, and was one of the few among the wealthy that enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the Czar on festive occasions. He became vice-president of the council of the Admiralty, was promoted, after the peace of Nystad, to the position of admiral of the Blue Flag, and made a knight of the order of Alexander Nevsky.

In Peter the Great's remarkable house in St. Petersburg there is preserved, among many other relics, a yawl which is called the grandfather of the fleet. With this, Peter had begun his nautical experiments, and in 1723, when he celebrated the founding of his fleet, he rowed down the Neva in it. Peter himself was at the rudder, Apraxin was cockswain, and Admiral Cruys, Vice-Admiral Gordon, Sievers and Menshikoff were at the oars. On this occasion the Czar embraced Cruys and called him his father.

During his whole life Cruys preserved a warm affection for his native land; hence it was natural that the Scandinavian colony in St. Petersburg gathered about him. His successor as vice-president of the council of the Admiralty, and as master of ordnance, was the former Danish naval lieutenant Peter Sievers, who likewise elevated himself to most important positions, and exerted a highly beneficial influence upon the development of the Russian fleet. At the side of these two heroes, moreover, there were others, as Admirals Daniel Wilster and Peter Bredal, Commander Thure Trane, and also Skeving, Herzenberg, Peder Grib, "Tordenskjold's[3] brave comrade in arms," and many others.

For a long time Vitus Bering was one of Cruys's most intimate associates, and these two, with Admiral Sievers, form an honorable trio in that foreign navy. Bering was soon appointed to a position in the Baltic fleet, and during Russia's protracted struggles, his energy found that scope which he before had sought on the ocean, and at the same time he had the satisfaction of fighting the foes of his native land. He was a bold and able commander. During the whole war he cruised about in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, and in the Baltic and other northern waters. Some of the most important transport expeditions were entrusted to him. The Czar prized his services very highly, and when, after the misfortune at Pruth in 1711, he laid a plan to rescue three of the best ships of his Black Sea fleet by a bold run through the Bosporus, Vitus Bering, Peder Bredal, and Simon Skop were chosen for the task. Whether the plan was carried out, it is difficult to determine. Berch says that it was not, and adds, "I cite the incident simply to show that even at that time Bering was looked upon as an excellent commander." In various West European authorities, however, it is distinctly stated that Sievers conducted the ships to England, and in a review of Bering's life published by the Admiralty in 1882, it is stated that Bering was in 1711 appointed to conduct the ship Munker from the Sea of Azov to the Baltic, and as the Admiralty would hardly in a condensed report have taken notice of plans which had never been carried out, it seems most probable that Berch has been incorrectly informed.

In 1707 Bering was promoted to the position of lieutenant, in 1710 to that of lieutenant-captain, and in 1715 to that of captain of the fourth rank, when he assumed command of the new ship Selafail in Archangel to sail it to Copenhagen and Kronstadt. In 1716 he participated in an expedition of the united fleets to Bornholm under the command of Sievers. In 1717 he was made captain of the third, and in 1720 of the second rank, and took part, until peace was concluded, in the various manœuvers in the Baltic under the command of Gordon and Apraxin.[4]

After the peace of Nystad in 1721, however, his position became somewhat unpleasant. Although he was a brother-in-law of Vice-Admiral Saunders, he had, according to Berch, powerful enemies in the Admiralty. The numerous promotions made after the conclusion of peace, in no way applied to him. In the following year younger comrades were advanced beyond him, and hence in 1724 he demanded promotion to a captaincy of the first rank, or his discharge. After protracted negotiations, and in spite of the fact that Apraxin repeatedly refused to sign his discharge, he finally obtained it, and then withdrew to his home in Viborg, Finland, where he owned an estate, and where, no doubt on account of the Scandinavian character of the city, he preferred to stay. During the negotiations for his discharge, the Czar was in Olonetz, but some time afterwards he informed Apraxin that Bering was again to enter the navy, and with the desired promotion. This occurred in August, 1724, and a few months later Bering was appointed chief of the First Kamchatkan Expedition, the object of which was to determine whether Asia and America were connected by land.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Some details of Bering's genealogy, which can be of no interest to the American reader, the translator has taken the liberty to omit.

[2] Norway and Denmark were at this time united.—Tr.

[3] Peter Tordenskjold (1691-1720), a Norwegian in the Danish Norse service,—the greatest naval hero Scandinavia has ever produced.—Tr.

[4] See Appendix, Note 1.

[CHAPTER III.]
PLANS FOR BERING'S FIRST EXPEDITION.—PETER THE GREAT'S DESIRE TO KNOW THE EXTENT OF HIS EMPIRE.—THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE.

The equipment of Bering's first expedition was one of Peter the Great's last administrative acts. From his death-bed his energy set in motion those forces which in the generation succeeding him were to conquer a new world for human knowledge. It was not until his mighty spirit was about to depart this world that the work was begun, but the impetus given by him was destined to be effective for half a century; and the results achieved still excite our admiration.

Peter was incited to undertake this work by a desire for booty, by a keen, somewhat barbaric curiosity, and by a just desire to know the natural boundaries of his dominion. He was no doubt less influenced by the flattery of the French Academy and other institutions than is generally supposed. His great enterprise suddenly brought Russia into the front rank of those nations which at that time were doing geographical exploration. Just before his death three great enterprises were planned: the establishment of a mart at the mouth of the river Kur for the oriental trade, the building up of a maritime trade with India, and an expedition to search for the boundary between Asia and America. The first two projects did not survive the Czar, but Bering clung to the plan proposed for him, and accomplished his task.

Peter the Great gave no heed to obstacles, and never weighed the possibilities for the success of an enterprise. Consequently his plans were on a grand scale, but the means set aside for carrying them out were often entirely inadequate, and sometimes even wholly inapplicable. His instructions were usually imperious and laconic. To his commander-in-chief in Astrakhan he once wrote: "When fifteen boats arrive from Kazan, you will sail them to Baku and sack the town." His instructions to Bering are characteristic of his condensed and irregular style. They were written by himself, in December, 1724, five weeks before his death, and are substantially as follows: "I. At Kamchatka or somewhere else two decked boats are to be built. II. With these you are to sail northward along the coast, and as the end of the coast is not known this land is undoubtedly America. III. For this reason you are to inquire where the American coast begins, and go to some European colony; and when European ships are seen you are to ask what the coast is called, note it down, make a landing, obtain reliable information, and then, after having charted the coast, return."

After West Europe for two centuries had wearied itself with the question of a Northeast passage and made strenuous efforts to navigate the famed Strait of Anian, Russia undertook the task in a practical manner and went in search of the strait, before it started out on a voyage around the northern part of the old world.

Were Asia and America connected, or was there a strait between the two countries? Was there a Northwest and a Northeast passage? It was these great and interesting questions that were to be settled by Bering's first expedition. Peter himself had no faith in a strait. He had, however, no means of knowing anything about it, for at his death the east coast of Asia was known only as far as the island of Yezo. The Pacific coast of America had been explored and charted no farther than Cape Blanco, 43° north latitude, while all of the northern portion of the Pacific, its eastern and western coast-lines, its northern termination, and its relation to the polar sea, still awaited its discoverer.

The above-mentioned ukase shows that the Czar's inquisitive mind was dwelling on the possibility of being able, through northeastern Asia, to open a way to the rich European colonies in Central America. He knew neither the enormous extent of the far East nor the vastness of the ocean that separated it from the Spanish colonies. Yet even at that time, various representatives of the great empire living in northeastern Siberia had some knowledge of the relative situation of the two continents and could have given Bering's expedition valuable directions.

Rumors of the proximity of the American continent to the northeastern corner of Asia must very early have been transmitted through Siberia, for the geographers of the sixteenth century have the relative position of the two continents approximately correct. Thus on the Barents map of 1598, republished by J. J. Pontanus in 1611, a large continent towers above northeastern Asia with the superscription, "America Pars," the two countries being separated by the Strait of Anian[5] (Fretum Anian). On a map by Joducus Hondius, who died in 1611, East Siberia is drawn as a parallelogram projecting toward the northeast, and directly opposite and quite near the northeast corner of this figure a country is represented with the same superscription. This is found again in the map by Gerhard Mercator which accompanies Nicolai Witsen's "Noord en Ost Tartarye," 1705, and in several other sixteenth century atlases. It is quite impossible to determine how much of this apparent knowledge is due to vague reports combined with happy guessing, and how much to a practical desire for such a passage on the part of European navigators, whose expensive polar expeditions otherwise would be folly. This much is certain, however: Witsen and other leading geographers based their views on information received from Siberia and Russia.[6]

In the history of discoveries the spirit of human enterprise has fought its way through an incalculable number of mirages. These have aroused the imagination, caused agitations, debates, and discussions, but have usually veiled an earlier period's knowledge of the question. There are many re-discovered countries on our globe. So in this case. The northwestern part of America wholly disappeared from the cartography of the seventeenth century, and through the influence of Witsen's and Homann's later maps it became customary to represent the eastern coast of Asia by a meridian passing a little east of Yakutsk, without any suggestions whatever in regard to its strongly marked peninsulas or to an adjacent western continent. But even these representations were originally Russian, and are undoubtedly due to the first original Russian atlas, published by Remesoff. They finally gave way to the geographical explorations of the eighteenth century, which began shortly after the accession of Peter the Great, having been provoked by political events and conditions.

By the treaty of Nertchinsk in 1689 the Yablonoi Mountains were established as the boundary line between Russia and China. By this means the way to the fertile lands of Amoor was barred to that indurate caste of Russian hussars and Cossacks who had conquered for the White Czar the vast tracts of Siberia. A second time they fell upon northeastern Siberia, pressing their way, as before, across uninhabited tundras along the northern ocean, and thence conquered the inhabited districts toward the south. They discovered the island of Liakhov, penetrated the country of the Chukchees, Koriaks, and Kamshadales, and at the Anadyr River, in Deshneff's old palisaded fort, they found that point of support from which they maintained Russia's power in the extreme northeast. In this way the Russians learned the enormous extent of the country; but as they had no exact locations, they formed a very incorrect opinion of its outlines, and estimated its length from west to east too small by forty degrees.

From the fort on the Anadyr, Kamchatka was conquered in the first years of the eighteenth century, and from here came the first information concerning America. In 1711 the Cossack Popoff visited the Chukchee peninsula, and here he heard that from either side of the peninsula, both from the "Kolymaic" Sea and the Gulf of Anadyr, an island could be seen in the distance, which the Chukchees called "the great land." This land they said they could reach in baidars (boats rowed by women) in one day. Here were found large forests of pine, cedar, and other trees, and also many different kinds of animals not found in their country. This reliable information concerning America seems at the time to have been known in other parts of Siberia only in the way of vague reports, and was soon confused with descriptions of islands in the Arctic.

Czar Peter, however, soon laid his adjusting hand upon these groping efforts. By the aid of Swedish prisoners of war, he opened the navigation from Okhotsk to Kamchatka, and thus avoided the circuitous route by way of the Anadyr. A Cossack by the name of Ivan Kosyrefski (the son of a Polish officer in Russian captivity) was ordered to explore the peninsula to its southern extremity, and also some of the Kurile Islands. In 1719 he officially despatched the surveyors Yevrinoff and Lushin to ascertain whether Asia and America were connected, but secretly he instructed them to go to the Kurile Islands to search for precious metals, especially a white mineral which the Japanese were said to obtain in large quantities from the fifth or sixth island. Through these various expeditions there was collected vast, although unscientific, materials for the more correct understanding of the geography of eastern Asia, the Sea of Okhotsk, Kamchatka, the Kuriles, and Yezo. Even concerning the Island of Nipon (Hondo), shipwrecked Japanese had given valuable information. Simultaneously, the northern coast about the mouth of the Kolyma, had been explored by the Cossacks Viligin and Amossoff. Through them the first information concerning the Bear Islands and Wrangell Island found its way to Yakutsk. The Cossack chief Shestakoff, who had traveled into the northeastern regions toward the land of the Chukchees, accepted the accounts of the former for his map, but as he could neither read nor write, matters were most bewilderingly confused. Yet his representations were later accepted by Strahlenberg and Joseph de l'Isle in their maps.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] In Baron A. E. Nordenskjöld's review of the Danish edition of this work on Bering in the Journal of the American Geographical Society, Vol. XVII., p. 290, he says: "In Barents' map of 1598 there is not, as Mr. Lauridsen seems to suppose, anything original as to the delineation of the northern coast of Asia and the relative situation of Asia and America. In this respect Barents' map is only a reproduction of older maps, which, with regard to the delineation of the northern coast of Asia, are based upon pre-Columbian suppositions; and these again rest upon the story told by Pliny the Elder in the 'Historia Naturalis,' L. VII., 13, 17, about the northern limit of the world known to him," etc. The judicious reader can not fail to see that the renowned author here shoots far beyond the mark, for Pliny the Elder can hardly be supposed to have had any knowledge of "America Pars."—Author's Note to American Edition.

[6] Note 2.

[CHAPTER IV.]
BERING'S KNOWLEDGE OF SIBERIAN GEOGRAPHY.—TERRORS OF TRAVELING IN SIBERIA.—THE EXPEDITION STARTS OUT.—THE JOURNEY FROM ST. PETERSBURG TO THE PACIFIC.

And now the question is, what did Bering know of these efforts which had been made during the decades preceding his expedition, and which in spite of their unscientific character, were nevertheless of such great importance in order to be able to initiate one's self in the geography of eastern Asia? In the first place, the surveyor Lushin, was a member of the Bering expedition, and when Bering, in the summer of 1726, was sojourning in Yakutsk, Shestakoff's nephew, who had accompanied his uncle on his expedition against the Chukchees, became an attaché of Bering's expedition, while the elder Shestakoff had gone to Russia to collect means for the contemplated military expedition. Furthermore, Ivan Kosyrefski, who in the meantime had become a monk, was also staying in Yakutsk, and his valuable report preserved in the voivode's (governor's) office was now surrendered to Bering. Thus we see that Bering was in personal contact with the men, who, in the decade preceding, were the chief possessors of geographical knowledge concerning those northeastern regions.

In the second place, he received in Yakutsk information concerning Deshneff's journey in 1648 from the Kolyma to the Anadyr River. Although this journey was first critically discussed by G. F. Müller,[7] its main features were nevertheless well known in Siberia, and are referred to, among other places, in Strahlenberg's book, whence the results appear in Bellini's map in Peter Charlesvoix's "Histoire du Japan," published in 1735. Unfortunately, however, Bering seems to have had no knowledge of Popoff's expedition to the Chukchees peninsula and his information concerning the adjacent American continent, or of Strahlenberg's outline maps, which were not published until after his departure from St. Petersburg.

Bering's two expeditions are unique in the history of Arctic explorations. His real starting point was on the extremest outskirts of the earth, where only the hunter and yassak-collector had preceded him. Kamchatka was at that time just as wild a region as Boothia or the coasts of Smith's Sound are in our day, and, practically viewed, it was far more distant from St. Petersburg than any known point now is from us. One hundred and thirty degrees—several thousand miles—the earth's most inhospitable tracts, the coldest regions on the globe, mountains, endless steppes, impenetrable forests, morasses, and fields of trackless snow were still between him and the mouth of the Kamchatka River, and thither he was to lead, not a small expedition, but an enormous provision train and large quantities of material for ship-building. On the journey, river-boats had to be built by the score, and also two ships. Now his course was up the swift streams of Siberia, and now on horseback or in sledges drawn by dogs through the dreary and desolate forests of the Yakuts and Tunguses. He employed several hundred laborers and twice as many horses to do work which modern ships can accomplish in a few weeks. Franklin, Mackenzie, Schwatka, and many others have traversed vast tracts of the Arctic regions, but their expeditions in light sledges can not be compared with those burdensome transports which Bering and his men dragged from the Gulf of Finland to the shores of the Pacific.

In the early part of the year 1725 the expedition was ready to start out from St. Petersburg. The officers were the two Danes, Vitus Bering, captain and chief, and Martin Spangberg, lieutenant and second in command, and also the following: Lieut. Alexei Chirikoff, Second Lieut. Peter Chaplin, the cartographers Luskin and Patiloff, the mates, Richard Engel and George Morison, Dr. Niemann, and Rev. Ilarion.[8] The subordinates were principally sailors, carpenters, sailmakers, blacksmiths, and other mechanics.

Peter the Great died Jan. 28, 1725;[9] but a part of the expedition under the command of Lieut. Chirikoff had already started on the 24th; Bering followed Feb. 5. They passed the whole of the first summer in toilsome expeditions overland and on rivers in western Siberia. March 16, they arrived at Tobolsk, whence, in May, the journey was continued with four rafts and seven boats by way of the rivers Irtish, Obi, Ket, Yenisei, Tunguska, and Ilim, through regions where there was scarcely a Russian isba, on rivers which were dangerous on account of hidden rocks and skerries, and where progress was constantly interrupted by the transporting that had to be done between the streams. September 29, the expedition arrived at the town of Ilimsk and had to pass the winter there. Meanwhile, however, Lieut. Chaplin had, in the spring, been sent in advance to Yakutsk, in order, at the voivode's (governor's) to hasten the preparations for transportation in the direction of Okhotsk, whither he was to send a small command who were to fell trees and begin the work of ship-building. Bering[10] himself went to Irkutsk to obtain from the governor there information concerning the climate and physical features of Eastern Siberia, the modes of travel, and means of transportation in that distant and little known country. Spangberg was sent with mechanics and soldiers to the Kut, a tributary of the Lena, for the purpose of cutting timber and building vessels for the voyages to be made in the spring. At Ustkutsk there were built in all fifteen barges (about 45 feet long, 12 feet wide and 15 inches deep) and fourteen boats. On May 8, 1726, Spangberg sailed for Yakutsk, and somewhat later Chirikoff started off with the rear. By the middle of June, the expedition was gathered at the capital of East Siberia, which at that time had three hundred houses. Here Bering remained until the 16th of August, busily engaged in making preparations for the difficult journey eastward. He had made two thousand leathern sacks for transporting flour to Okhotsk, and gave the voivode orders to keep in readiness six hundred horses to forward other necessaries for the expedition.

From this point the expedition traveled an entirely untrodden path, and the 1026 versts (685 miles) to Okhotsk were a severe test of its endurance. Even in our day, this journey can be made only under the greatest difficulties. The region is rough and mountainous, and intersected by deep streams without bridges or other means of crossing. The traveler must traverse dangerous swamps and tundras, or cut his way through dense forests. In the winter the difficulties are doubled. Horses, reindeer, and dogs soon become exhausted on these unbroken roads. A space cleared in the snow, when the cooking, eating, and sleeping are done, is the only shelter. The temperature falls to -46° R. (-71° Fahrenheit). Clothing must be changed daily to avoid dampness, and when the poorgas (blizzards) sweep over the snowy wastes, a few steps from camp are often fatal. This is a description of that region in our day, and it was hardly any more inviting over a hundred and fifty years ago.

It was found necessary to divide the expedition. The branching tributaries of the Lena offered possibilities for transportation which had to be taken advantage of. Hence, as early as July 7, Lieut. Spangberg was sent by river with thirteen rafts loaded with materials, and a force of 204 workmen to reach Yudomskaya Krest by way of the tributaries Aldan, Maya, and Yudoma, and thence across a ridge down to the river Urak, which flows into the Sea of Okhotsk. The overland expeditions, consisting of 800 horses, were sent in various directions. Bering himself started out on August 16, with 200 horses, and after a journey of forty-five days, reached Okhotsk. The journey was a very difficult one. The horses sought in vain for food under the deep snow. Scores of them were overcome by hunger and exhaustion. The severe cold caused the forces much suffering and hardship, nor did they find but few comforts when they reached Okhotsk in the latter part of October. The town consisted of only eleven huts, with ten Russian families, who supported themselves by fishing. Here, too, many of the horses died for lack of food, and a herd of heifers sent there by Shestakoff was lost from the same cause. Only one survived the winter. It was now necessary to build huts for the winter. The whole of November was spent in felling trees, and not until December 2, could Bering take shelter under a roof of his own. On the other hand, the ship for the expedition was on the stocks, and in spite of all troubles and privations, Bering found time to push forward vigorously its construction.

Spangberg, however, fared worst of all. Winter took him by surprise two hundred and seventy-five miles from Yudomskaya Krest, the nearest inhabited place, in an entirely barren and swampy region where he could not obtain the slightest assistance. His boats and the bulk of their provisions had to be left at the confluence of the Yorbovaya and the Yudoma, while he and his men, with what provisions they could take with them on the hand-sleds, started out for Okhotsk on foot. Meanwhile, the severity of the winter increased, the mercury congealed, and the snow was soon six feet deep. This forced them to leave their sleds, and for eight full weeks after November 4, these travelers sought shelter every night in the snows of Siberia, wrapped in all the furs they could possibly get hold of. Their provisions were soon exhausted, famine soon became a companion to cold, and matters even came to such a pass that they were compelled to try to maintain life by gnawing "straps, leathern bags, and shoes." They would surely have starved to death, had they not accidentally happened to strike Bering's route, where they found dead horses and a few hundred-weights of flour. December 21, Bering received from Spangberg a message, relating that he had started for Yudomskaya Krest with ninety-six sledges, and that he had left the boats in charge of a mate and six guards. Bering immediately dispatched ten sledges with provisions for his relief, and on the succeeding day, thirty-seven sledges with thirty-nine men. January 6, 1727, Spangberg reached Okhotsk, and a few days later his whole command had arrived, eighteen of whom were now sick. Twice during the course of the winter, Spangberg and Chaplin were obliged to repeat this journey to rescue the materials at the Yudoma. Not until midsummer, 1727, did the rear under the command of Chirikoff arrive from Yakutsk.

And yet Bering was far from the place where his work of discovery could begin. On June 8, the new ship Fortuna was launched and equipped for the prospective voyage. Moreover, the ship that had been used in exploring the Sea of Okhotsk in 1716 arrived, and after thorough repairs was put into the service.

Bering's next objective point was the mouth of the river Bolshoya in southwestern Kamchatka. From the mouth of this river, which is navigable for small vessels, he took the Cossack route to the interior, first up the Bolshoya to the tributary Byistraya, then up this to within forty versts of its source, thence across a portage to the Kamchatka, the mouth of which was his real objective point. From this position he would be able to fall back upon the Russian colony, which comprised a number of unimportant stockaded forts on the Bolshoya and Kamchatka rivers, and could also gain support from that control of the natives which was exercised from this point. This change of base could have been much more easily and quickly accomplished by sailing around the Kamchatka Peninsula, but this was something that had never been done. No accurate information was to be had in regard to the waters, or to the location of any place. Possibly Bering had not as yet been able to disabuse his mind of the prevalent delusions concerning the great extent of Kamchatka. In the second place, he was no doubt unwilling to trust his invaluable stores in the inferior vessels built at Okhotsk. Hence he took the old route.

July 1, Spangberg sailed with the Fortuna for Bolsheretsk, accompanied by thirteen Siberian traders. Two days later Chirikoff brought up the rear from Yakutsk. Somewhat later, the quartermaster arrived with 110 horses and 200 sacks of flour. A week later 63 horses more arrived, on July 20, one soldier with 80 horses, and by the 30th over 150 horses more, and also 50 oxen.

August 11, Spangberg returned from his voyage to the Bolshoya River, and on the 19th the whole command went on board,—some on the Fortuna and others on the old vessel. Their destination was the Bolshoya, situated 650 miles from Okhotsk, where they arrived September 4. Here the cargoes were transferred to boats and, in the course of the month of September, brought to the fort, a simple log fortress with seventeen Russian dwellings and a chapel, twenty miles from the sea. It took the whole winter to traverse, first with boats and later with sledges, the 585 miles across Kamchatka, from Bolsheretsk to the lower Kamchatka fort. Under the greatest difficulties, the expedition now followed the course of the Kamchatka River, camping at night in the snow, and enduring many a fierce struggle with the inclement weather. The natives were summoned from far and near to assist in transporting their goods, but the undertaking proved fatal to many of them. Finally on March 11, 1728, Bering reached his destination, the lower Kamchatka Ostrog,[11] where he found forty huts scattered along the banks of the river, a fort, and a church. A handful of Cossacks lived here. They occupied huts built above the surface of the ground. They did not always eat their fish raw, but in other respects lived like the natives, and were in no regard much more civilized than they. The fort was located twenty miles from the sea, surrounded by forests of larch, which yielded excellent material for ship-building. From this point the exploring party proper was to start out.[12]

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Note 3.

[8] Note 4.

[9] Here as elsewhere, Old Style.

[10] Note 5.

[11] An Ostrog is a stockaded post or village.

[12] Note 6.

[CHAPTER V.]
THE BUILDING OF THE GABRIEL—THE DISCOVERY OF BERING STRAIT.

Bering now found himself upon the bleak shores of an Arctic sea, with no other resources than those he had brought with him, or could extort from these barren tracts. He again began the work of ship-building, and in the summer of 1728, a ship called the Gabriel, staunch enough to weather a heavy sea, was launched. The timber for this vessel had been hauled to the ship-yard by dogs; the tar they had prepared themselves, while rigging, cable, and anchors had been dragged nearly two thousand miles through one of the most desolate regions of the earth. And as for the provisions, they would certainly strike terror in the hearts of Arctic explorers of to-day. "Fish oil was his butter, and dried fish his beef and pork. Salt he was obliged to get from the sea," and according to the directions of the Cossacks he distilled spirits from "sweet straw."[13] Thus supplied with a year's provisions, he started upon his voyage of discovery along an unknown coast and on an unknown sea. "It is certain," says Dr. Campbell concerning Bering at this stage, "that no person better fitted for this undertaking could have been found; no difficulty, no danger daunted him. With untiring industry and almost incredible patience he overcame those difficulties which to anyone else would have seemed insurmountable."

On July 9, the Gabriel started down the river, and on the 13th the sails were hoisted. The crew numbered forty-four men: namely, one captain, two lieutenants, one second lieutenant, one physician, one quartermaster, eight sailors, one saddler, one rope-maker, five carpenters, one bailiff, two Cossacks, nine soldiers, six servants, one drummer, and two interpreters. Bering's point of departure was the lower Kamchatka fort, situated 160° 50' east of Greenwich, the variation of the compass being 13° 10' E. The latitude of the cape at the mouth of the Kamchatka River was determined as 56° 3' N., which agrees with the observations made by Cook, who was very near this point on his last voyage. The day was reckoned from 12 o'clock at noon, on which account his dating does not correspond with that of civil time; hence, the 16th of August with him began on the 15th, at noon. The mile of the journal is the Italian mile, which is somewhat longer than the English mile. Bering's course was nearly all the time along the coast, in from nine to twelve fathoms of water, and usually with land in sight to the north and west. On July 27, they passed Cape St. Thaddeus at a distance of three miles, and here the sea seemed fairly alive with spotted whales, seals, sea-lions, and dolphins. After having sailed past the Anadyr River, without quite being able to find their bearings in regions of which they had not a single astronomical determination, and where they were not successful in finding any natives, they finally, on July 31, saw land extending along the northern horizon, and soon afterwards sailed into the Bay of the Holy Cross (St. Kresta Bay) where the Gabriel spent two days under sail in search of fresh water and a place to anchor. On the 2d of August the latitude was determined as 60° 50' N., whereupon the voyage was continued to the southeast along the high and rocky coast, where every indentation was very carefully explored. August 6, the Gabriel lay in the Bay of Preobrashensky, and on the 7th, Chaplin was sent ashore to obtain water from a mountain stream. On his way he found huts, where there had quite recently been Chukchees, and in various places he found footpaths, but met no human beings. On the 8th, Bering sailed along the coast in a south southeasterly direction. At 7 o'clock, a boat containing eight men was seen rowing toward the vessel. They did not, however, dare to approach the Gabriel, but at last one of the number jumped into the water, and on two inflated seal bladders swam out to the ship, and announced, by the aid of the two Koriak interpreters, that they were Chukchees, and that their people lived along the coast, that they knew the Russians well, that the Anadyr River lay far to the west, that the continent extended in the same direction, and that they would soon get sight of an island. The Koriaks, however, understood his language only imperfectly, and the journal regrets that they were on this account prevented from obtaining further important information. Bering gave him some small presents and sent him back to try to persuade his companions to come on board. They approached the vessel, but suddenly turned and disappeared. The latitude was 64° 41'.

August 9, Cape Chukotskoi was doubled, an important event in the history of this expedition,—an event which Müller, in order to make results fit into his frame, has not even mentioned. The name, it is true, is not found in the journal, but it appears on Bering's chart in Du Halde's work, which Müller knew. Bering determined the southern extremity of the cape to be 64° 18', Cook 64° 13'.

August 11, the weather was calm and cloudy. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon, they saw an island toward the southeast, which Bering, in honor of the day, called St. Lawrence. At noon the latitude was found to be 64° 20', and hence the Gabriel was in the strait between Asia and America.

August 12, there was a light breeze and cloudy weather. On this day they sailed sixty-nine miles, but the difference in latitude was only 29'. At sunset the longitude was computed by the aid of the variation of the needle to be 25° 31' east of the lower Kamchatka fort, or 187° 21' east of Greenwich.

August 13, a fresh breeze and cloudy. Bering sailed during the whole day with land in sight, and the difference in latitude was only 78'.

August 14, weather calm and cloudy. They sailed 29 miles + 8¾ miles for the current. The course of the current was from south southeast to north northwest. At noon the latitude was 66° 41' when they saw high land astern, and three hours later high mountains. (East Cape is 66° 6' N. lat. and 190° 21' east of Greenwich.)

August 15, gentle wind, cloudy weather. From noon until 3 o'clock Bering sailed to the northeast, and after having sailed seven miles in this direction, he determined to turn back. At 3 o'clock he announced, that as he had now accomplished his task, it was his duty, according to his orders, to return. His bearings were then 67° 18' N. latitude, and 30° 19' east of the Kamchatka fort, or 193° 7' east of Greenwich. In Du Halde, where Bering himself gives his reasons, it is stated: "This was Captain Bering's most northerly point. He thought that he had accomplished his task and obeyed orders, especially as he no longer could see the coast extending toward the north in the same way. ("Surtout, parcequ'il ne voyait plus que les terres continuassent de courier de même du côté du Nord.") Moreover, if they should go farther, he feared, in case they should have adverse winds that they might not be able to return to Kamchatka before the end of the summer, and how were they to be able to pass the winter in such a climate, liable to fall into the hands of a people who had not yet been subjugated, and who were human only in outward appearance.[14]

When Bering turned about, his command was to steer south by west, half west. In this course they sailed with the wind at a rate of more than seven miles an hour. At 9 o'clock in the morning, they saw a high mountain on the right, where Chukchees lived, and to the left and seaward they saw an island, which in honor of the day they called Diomede.[15] This day they sailed 115 miles, and reached latitude 66° 2'.

On August 17, Bering again passed the narrowest part of the strait. The weather was cloudy, there was a fresh breeze, and they sailed along the Asiatic coast, where they saw many Chukchees, and at two places they saw dwellings. The natives fled at the sight of the ship. At 3 o'clock very high land and mountains were passed. With a very good breeze, they had been enabled to sail 164 miles, and an observation showed that they were in latitude 64° 27'. According to this, Bering was out of the strait and getting farther and farther away from the American continent.

August 18, the wind was light and the weather clear. On the 20th, beyond the Island of St. Lawrence, he met other Chukchees, who told him that they had made journeys from the Kolyma River westward to Olenek, but that they never went by sea. They knew of the Anadyr fort which lay farther to the south; on this coast there dwelt people of their race; others they did not know.

After a storm on the 31st of August, in which the main and foresail were rent, the anchor cable was broken and the anchor lost, they reached the mouth of the Kamchatka at 5 o'clock P. M., September 2, 1728.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Note 7.

[14] Note 8.

[15] Note 9.

[CHAPTER VI.]
THE TASK ASSIGNED BY PETER THE GREAT ACCOMPLISHED.—HISTORY OF THE CARTOGRAPHY OF EAST SIBERIA.—CAPTAIN COOK'S DEFENSE OF BERING.

Bering turned back because he felt convinced that he had sailed around the northeastern corner of Asia, and had demonstrated that in this part of the earth the two great continents were not connected. The third point in his orders was of course dropped, for along the Siberian coasts of the Arctic sea, he could expect to find neither European colonists nor ships; hence, further search with this object in view would be vain. He had a very clear idea of the general outline of eastern Asia, and this knowledge was based upon the facts of his own voyage, the information he had obtained in Yakutsk about Deshneff's expedition from Kolyma to Anadyr, and upon the account which the natives gave of the country and of their commercial journeys westward to Olenek.

He was, moreover, convinced that he had given the search for a Northeast passage a rational foundation, and his thoughts on this subject are found clearly presented in a correspondence from St. Petersburg to a Copenhagen periodical, Nye Tidende, in 1730, whence the following: "Bering has ascertained that there really does exist a Northeast passage, and that from the Lena River it is possible, provided one is not prevented by polar ice, to sail to Kamchatka, and thence to Japan, China, and the East Indies." This correspondence, which appeared immediately after his return on the first of March, 1730, originated either with him or with some of his immediate friends, and shows that he fully appreciated the extent of his discovery.[16] It was this conviction that led him to undertake his next great enterprise, the navigating and charting of the Northeast passage from the Obi River to Japan,—from the known West to the known East.

Unfortunately, however, the principal result of his work remains as above stated. An unhappy fate prevented him from discovering the adjacent American continent. At the narrowest place, Bering Strait is 39 miles wide; and hence, under favorable conditions, it is possible to see simultaneously the coast-lines of both continents.[17] Cook, more fortunate than Bering, was enabled to do this, for when he approached the strait, the sun dispersed the fog, and at one glance both continents were seen. With Bering it was otherwise, for, as we have seen from his journal, the weather during the whole time that he was in the strait, both on the voyage up and back, was dark and cloudy. Not until the 18th of August did the weather clear up, but as the Gabriel was sailing before a sharp breeze, he was then too far away to see land on the other side. "This," Von Baer exclaims, "must be called bad luck."

We may possibly feel inclined to blame Bering for his haste. Why did he not cruise about in the region of 65° to 67° north latitude? A few hours' sailing would have brought him to the American coast. This objection may, however, prove to be illegitimate. The geographical explorer, as well as every other investigator, has a right to be judged from the standpoint of his times, and on the basis of his own premises. Bering had no apprehension of an adjacent continent, partly on account of the Koriak interpreter's imperfect knowledge of the Chukchee tongue, partly as a result of the fact that the knowledge of the times concerning the western coast of America was very meager. This knowledge extended no farther than to 43° north latitude,—to Cape Blanco in California; hence, in the nature of things, he could not be expected to search for land which presumably he knew nothing of. But here we must also take into consideration his poor equipment. His cables, ropes, and sails were in such bad condition, after the three years' transport through Siberia, that he could not weather a storm, and his stock of provisions was running so low that it put an unpleasant check on any inclination to overreach his main object, and this, as we have seen, did not include the exploration of an American coast, if separated from Asia. To explore a new coast thirteen degrees of latitude and thirty degrees of longitude in extent, and make such a chart of it that its outline is comparatively correct, and which, for a long time, was far superior to anything made afterward,[18] ought certainly to be considered a splendid result, when we remember that the objects of the expedition were entirely of a nautico-geographical character. Bering's determinations of longitude in East Siberia were the first made there, and through them it was ascertained that the country extended thirty degrees farther toward the east than was supposed. His observations were based on two eclipses of the moon in Kamchatka in the years 1728 and 1729,[19] and although they were not entirely accurate, they vary so little, that the general position of the country was established. And hence we are not surprised to find that no one has given Bering a better testimonial than his great and more fortunate successor, Captain Cook. He says:[20] "In justice to the memory of Bering, I must say, that he has delineated the coast very well, and fixed the latitude and longitude of the points better than could be expected from the methods he had to go by." Yes, Captain Cook found it necessary to defend Bering against the only official report of the expedition which at that time had appeared, and more than once he puts in proper relief Bering's sober investigations, as compared with Müller's fancies and guesses. Before the time of Cook, it had been customary to depreciate Bering's work;[21] but since that time Admiral Lütke, a hundred years after Bering's death, has defended his reputation, and Berch, who very carefully perused his journals, repeatedly expresses his admiration for the accuracy with which the nautical computations were made. This statement is made after a comparison of results with those obtained by Captain Cook.

Furthermore, as has already been said, Bering was not aware of the fact that he was sailing in a comparatively narrow sound,—in that strait which has carried his name to posterity. He saw nothing beyond the nearest of the Diomede Islands, that is to say, the middle of the strait; and this island, as we have seen, is mentioned in the journal and on the chart, with the latitude correctly given.[22] His name was not immediately associated with these regions. The first place, so far as I am able to ascertain, that the name Bering Strait appears, is on a map which accompanies Rob. de Vangondie's "Mémoire sur les pays de l'Asie," Paris, 1774. But it is especially to Captain Cook's high-mindedness that the name was retained, for it was used in his great work. Later, Reinholdt Forster, who characterizes Bering as "a meritorious and truly great navigator," triumphantly fought his cause against Büsching and others.[23]

But even at the present time, an interesting misunderstanding attaches to this part of Bering's history and the cartography of these regions. In our Arctic literature and on all our polar maps, it is asserted that Vitus Bering, on his first voyage, turned back at Cape Serdze Kamen. That such a supposition has been able to maintain itself, only shows how little the original sources of his history are known in West Europe, and how unheeded they have been in Russia. About a hundred years ago the Danish Admiral De Löwenörn and the English hydrographer A. Dalrymple showed that Frobisher Strait had by some ignorant hand been located on the east coast of Greenland, while it was in reality located on the coast of Meta incognita beyond Davis Strait.[24] A similar error presents itself in connection with Serdze Kamen. It can be historically established that this name has been the object of a double change, and that the present Serdze Kamen on the northern coast of the Chukchee peninsula, has nothing whatever to do with the history of Bering and his voyage. This misunderstanding is, however, not of recent date, for as early as in the first decade after the voyage, it was assumed that Bering's course, even after he had passed East Cape, was along the coast. Thus I find on a map by Hazius in Nuremberg, 1738,[25] and other maps of about the same time, based on Bering's map as given by Du Halde, that the Gabriel's turning point is marked by a star near the coast with the same latitude as the present Serdze Kamen, with the following explanation: "Terminus litorum a Navarcho Beerings recognitorum." This supposition gradually gained ground in West Europe as well as in Russia, especially so, too, as Bering's new expedition and consequent death prevented him from correcting the error, and as there for a generation was nothing more known of the voyage than the resumé which appears in Du Halde's work. Moreover, the manner in which the coast-line in Bering's original map is extended beyond East Cape, has only served to strengthen the opinion. The fact is that Serdze Kamen was a name unknown to Bering. It is found neither on his map, in his own account, nor in the ship's journal, and could not be so found for a very obvious reason—Bering had never been there.

After having passed East Cape on the 14th of August, he no longer sailed along the coast. On that day at noon they still saw land astern, and three hours later, high mountains, but during the succeeding forty-eight hours land was seen neither to the east nor the west.

As we have seen, the journal gives the turning point as 4° 44' east of Cape Chukotskoi, and Dr. Campbell gives another series of astronomical determinations, sent by Bering from Kamchatka to the Senate in St. Petersburg, and these show in a striking way that the turning point was east of the northeastern corner of Asia.

According to these:[26]

The Island of St. Lawrence is 64° north latitude and 122° 55' east of Tobolsk.

The Island of Diomede is 66° north latitude and 125° 42' east of Tobolsk.

The turning point, 67° 18' north latitude and 126° 7' east of Tobolsk.

Hence, Serdze Kamen (67° 3' north latitude and 188° 11' east of Greenwich), as Berch[27] expressly remarks, must have lain more than four degrees west of the turning point. That this must have been so appears also from the course of the vessel on its return, west southwest, which would have been impossible, if the Gabriel had been near the north coast, intending to return through the strait. Among recent writers, Von Baer[28] alone critically calls attention to these facts, without, however, thoroughly investigating the case. This I shall now attempt to do.

The name Serdze Kamen appears for the first time—historically speaking—in Gerhard Fr. Müller's Sammlung Russischer Geschichte, Vol. III., 1758.[29] He says: "Bering finally, in a latitude of 67° 18', reached a headland whence the coast recedes to the west. From this the captain drew the very plausible conclusion that he now had reached the most northeasterly point of Asia. But here we are forced to admit that the circumstance upon which the captain based his conclusion was false, as it has since been learned that the above-mentioned headland was identical with the one called Serdze Kamen by the inhabitants of Fort Anadyr, on account of the promontory being heart-shaped." Even this looks suspicious. The account of some ignorant Cossacks is presented as a corrective to the report of educated navigators, and it is also indicated that the garrison at Fort Anadyr had exact knowledge of the northern coast of the Chukchee peninsula, something it did not have at all.[30]

But in order to understand Müller, it is necessary to make a slight digression. When Bering, in the summer of 1729, was on his return to St. Petersburg, he met, between Okhotsk and Yakutsk, the Cossack chief Shestakoff, who by the aid of Bering's ships intended to undertake an extensive military expedition in the eastern seas. He soon fell, however, in an engagement, but his comrade Captain Pavlutski led an invasion into the land of the Chukchees. From Fort Anadyr he went northward to the Arctic Ocean, thence along the coast toward the east, then across the Chukchee peninsula to the Pacific. A more detailed account than this cannot be given, for his route as indicated on Müller's map is an impossible one. This much, however, seems to be irrefutable: shortly after having crossed the Chukchee peninsula in a southerly direction, he came to a sea, and this sea could be no other than Bering Sea.[31] Moreover, it appears from the account, that he was on his return to the fort. Müller goes on to say: "From here he sent a part of his men in boats, whither he himself with the majority of the party proceeded by land, following the shore, which at this place extended toward the southeast. Those in boats were so near the shore that they reported to him every evening. On the seventh day, the party in boats came to the mouth of a river, and twelve days later, to the mouth of another. At about seven miles from this point there extends eastward far into the sea a headland, which is first mountainous, but then flat, as far as the eye can reach. This headland is probably what induced Captain Bering to turn back. Among the mountains on this promontory there is one which, as already noted, is by the natives of Anadyrskoi Ostrog called Serdze Kamen. From here Pavlutski started for the interior." On this loose reasoning rests Serdze Kamen,—a process of reasoning which attempts to show clearly that this headland must be a point on the Pacific coast, and that it must have lain many days' journey west of Bering Strait. But how is it possible, that Müller could have been so confused as to make such strange blunders? The case could not thus have presented itself to him. On the basis of Deshneff's journey and Pavlutski's cruise, he formed in his imagination a picture of northeastern Siberia, in which the Chukchee peninsula assumed a double horned shape, or—as Von Baer expresses it—resembled a bull's horn.

He used Bering's chart as a foundation when he had no other, but he omitted Cape Chukotskoi, and on the 66th parallel he inserted Serdze Kamen. From this point he made the coast recede, first westward, then northward and eastward to a large circular peninsula situated between 72°-75° north latitude, which he called Chukotskoi Noss. It is this imaginary peninsula which Pavlutski crosses. He accordingly reaches the Pacific coast to the north of Bering Strait, and in this way Müller succeeds in locating Serdze Kamen north of the strait. Hence, according to Müller's opinion, Bering had never doubled the northeastern corner of Asia, and he had never been out of the Pacific. "And although the coast beyond Serdze Kamen," he says, "turns westward, it forms only a large bay, and the coast-line again takes a northerly direction to Chukotskoi Noss, a large peninsula in a latitude of 70° or more, and where it would first be possible to say authoritatively that the two hemispheres were not connected. But how could all this have been known on the ship? The correct idea of the shape of the land of the Chukchees and the peninsula bearing the same name, is due to geographical investigations instituted by me at Yakutsk in 1736 and 1737."

Blinded by the archival dust of Yakutsk, Müller confused everything. Cape Chukotskoi, which Bering had found to be in latitude 64° 18' N., was placed beyond 72° N.; Bering's most northerly point, which lay far out in the sea, was changed to a headland in latitude 66° N., and, misled by some vague reports from the garrison at Fort Anadyr, he called this point Serdze Kamen. Everything is guess-work!

But where did Müller get his Serdze Kamen, and what place was it that the garrison at Fort Anadyr called by this name? For of the extreme northeast part of the peninsula, or the details of Bering's voyage—especially as early as in 1730—they could have had no knowledge. The explanation is not difficult. On Russian maps of the last century, those of Pallas and Billings, for example,[32] there is found on the eastern shore of St. Kresta Bay, somewhat northeast of the mouth of the Anadyr, a cape which bears the name of Serdze Kamen. As Bering does not have this name, and as it seems to have been known as early as at the time of Pavlutski, it must have originated either with him and the Cossacks at the fort, or with the Chukchees. Sauer relates the following concerning the origin of the name: "Serdze Kamen is a very remarkable mountain projecting into the bay at Anadyr. The land side of this mountain has many caves, to which the Chukchees fled when Pavlutski attacked them, and from where they killed a large number of Russians as they passed. Pavlutski was consequently obliged to seek reinforcements at Anadyr, where he told that the Chukchees shot his men from the heart of the cliff, and hence it received the name of Serdze Kamen, or the heart-cliff." But this account, which finds no authority whatever in Sauer's work, is severely criticised by Lütke, who calls attention to the fact that the Chukchees called a mountain on the eastern shore of the St. Kresta Bay Linglin Gaï, that is, the heart-cliff. It is quite improbable that they got this name from the Cossacks in Anadyrsk, and hence we here undoubtedly have the origin of the name.[33]

In Steller's various works one can see what confused ideas concerning Bering's first expedition the academists who wrote his history really had. They succeeded in bringing confusion into the simplest questions, and, as a result, wrecked his reputation. In Steller's description of Kamchatka, where he enumerates the headlands of the peninsula, a remarkable statement is found, which offers excellent proof of the correctness of Lütke's opinion.[34] The situation of Serdze Kamen between East Cape and the mouth of the Anadyr is here distinctly given. Hence, according to his opinion, Bering reached no farther than to St. Kresta Bay, and the sarcastic remarks plainly show Steller's partisan view.[35] Müller was not so rash. When he moved Cape Chukotskoi half a dozen degrees farther to the north, he moved Serdze Kamen also, and carried it from St. Kresta Bay up into Bering Strait.

In this cool move he was fortunate enough to get into a closer agreement with Bering's determination of latitude, but unfortunately hit upon new difficulties. His own map is based upon Bering's, as he had no other, but Bering's voyage did not, as is well known, end at any headland. Neither his chart nor his journal supports any such theory, and hence Müller, either accidentally or purposely, does not in his book have a word about the voyage from the 10th to the 15th of August, and on his map (1758) Bering's "track" is broken off near East Cape. This headland is Müller's Serdze Kamen,[36] a fact of which even a very cursory glance at Müller's and Bering's maps will convince any one. But even Bering had located the northeastern corner of Asia (East Cape) a few minutes too far northward, and in order to make the map coincide with his theory and with Bering's computations, Müller made the error greater, without, however, fixing it at Bering's turning-point, but at 67° 18' N. lat., where, according to Bering's and his own account, it ought to be.

Thus matters stood up to the time of Cook's third voyage. But as Cook had on board, not only Müller's book and map in an English translation, but also Bering's map, and an excellent treatise by Dr. Campbell in Harris's Collection of Voyages, he could pass judgment while at the place in question. As a matter of course he upholds Bering. Hence, it was a natural result that Serdze Kamen, which, as we have seen, was to coincide with the most northerly point reached by Bering, could no longer retain its position in the latitude of East Cape, which was more than a degree too far south; and in order to make Müller's account intelligible, Captain Cook had the choice between entirely expunging the name, or bringing it up to an approximately correct latitude. Cook chose the latter; and to this mistake on his part it is due that the last splinter of Müller's vain structure passed into the cartography of the future. In latitude 67° 3' N., Cook found a projecting promontory with many crags and peaks, and "possibly one or another of them may be heart-shaped. This peak we have, on Müller's authority, called Serdze Kamen."[37]

Here then we have the third Serdze Kamen, and we can now see how it has wandered about the northeast corner of Asia. As a matter of fact, it is situated in a latitude nearly the same as the most northerly point reached by Bering, but unfortunately this does not at all answer Müller's description. It does not project eastward into the sea, but on the contrary, its main direction is toward the northwest. At the base of this headland, the coast does not in a striking manner extend toward the west, but continues in its former direction. Nor does it consist of steep rocks and a low point extending farther than the eye can reach. In other words, the present Serdze Kamen has nothing whatever to do either with Bering's voyage or Müller's description.[38]

To this period of Bering's history another observation must be made. In his excellent treatise entitled, "What Geography owes to Peter the Great," Von Baer tries to show that Bering turned back in his course, not on the 15th, but on the 16th of August, and that too, notwithstanding the fact that both Bering and Müller, in print, give the former date,—yes, notwithstanding the fact that Von Baer himself had an autograph card from Bering which likewise gives the 15th. In his criticism on this point, Von Baer based his statements on those extracts of the ship's journal referred to above, which as we have seen give the 16th of August, and this, in his opinion, must be decisive. But the disagreement in these sources is only an apparent one. As we already have noted, Bering reckoned the day from 12 o'clock at noon. Hence the journal's 16th of August began at noon on the 15th of August, and as Bering turned back at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, this occurred on the 15th of August according to the calendar, and on the 16th of August according to the artificial day of the journal. Thus Von Baer's correction is based on a misunderstanding.[39] That this view of the question is correct is seen also from that passage in the journal where the Island of St. Lawrence is mentioned. According to the journal this island was passed at 2 o'clock P.M. on the 11th of August, and Berch, to whom we are indebted for information concerning Bering's day, is, strange to say, surprised to think that Bering named the island in honor of the saint of the preceding day, notwithstanding that the 11th at 2 o'clock P. M. is in reality, according to the calendar day, the 10th of August, St. Lawrence Day. The first twelve hours of the journal's day belong to the preceding day. Hence, Bering turned back August 15, at 3 o'clock P. M.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Note 10.

[17] Note 11.

[18] Note 12.

[19] Note 13.

[20] Note 14.

[21] Note 15.

[22] Note 16.

[23] Note 17.

[24] Note 18.

[25] Note 19.

[26] Note 20.

[27] Note 21.

[28] Note 22.

[29] Note 23.

[30] Note 24.

[31] Note 25.

[32] Note 26.

[33] Note 27.

[34] The passage is: "Das Tschuktschische Vorgebürge in Nord Osten, (elsewhere he locates it in latitude 66° N.), ein anderes 2 Grad ohngefaehr südlicher, Sirza-kamen, der Herzstein gennent, der auch bey der ersten Expedition der herzlichen Courage der See-Officier die Gränzen gesetzt. Ohnweit demselben ist eine sehr groze Einbucht und guter Hafen, auch vor die grösesten Fahrzenge; Das Anadirskische Vorgebürge...."

[35] Note 28.

[36] Note 29.

[37] Note 30.

[38] Note 31 and Map I. in Appendix.

[39] Note 32.

[CHAPTER VII.]
BERING'S WINTER AT THE FORT.—INDICATIONS OF AN ADJACENT CONTINENT.—UNSUCCESSFUL SEARCH FOR THIS CONTINENT.—RETURN TO ST. PETERSBURG.—GENERAL REVIEW OF THE RESULTS OF THE FIRST EXPEDITION.

When Bering on the 2d of September, 1728, entered the mouth of the river Kamchatka, he met the Fortuna, which had made a voyage around the Kamchatka Peninsula. Who commanded the vessel on this voyage, can not be ascertained.

Bering wintered at the fort. On the days that it was light, the men were busy at work or receiving instructions, and thus the winter passed without any remarkable occurrences or misfortunes. Spangberg, however, was obliged, on account of illness, to go to Bolsheretsk.[40]

At lower Kamchatskoi Ostrog, Bering became convinced that there must be a large wooded country not far to the east. The waves were more like those of a sea than of an ocean. The driftwood did not indicate the flora of eastern Asia, and the depth of the sea grew less toward the north; the east wind brought drift-ice to the mouth of the river after three days, the north wind, on the other hand, after five days. The birds of passage came to Kamchatka from the east. The reports of the natives corroborated his inferences. They declared that they were able, in very clear weather, to see land in the east (Bering Island), and that in the year 1715 a man had stranded there, who said that his native land was far to the east and had large rivers and forests with very high trees. All this led Bering to believe that a large country lay toward the northeast at no very great distance.

In the summer or 1729, he started out to find this country, leaving the mouth of the Kamchatka for the east, July 6. If the wind had been favourable, he would very soon have reached Bering Island, where twelve years later he was buried. He must have been very near this island, invisible to him, however, on account of a fog; but on the 8th of July he was struck by a severe storm, which the frail vessel and the weather-worn rigging could not defy, and hence on the 9th, he headed for the southern point of Kamchatka. But also on this voyage he did geographical service by determining the location of the peninsula and the northern Kurile Islands, as well as exploring the channel between them, and thus finding for the Russian mariner a new and easier route to Kamchatka. Berch says, that although Bering had adverse winds on the voyage to Bolsheretsk, all his computations are quite accurate; the difference in latitude between the latter place and lower Kamchatka Ostrog is given as 6° 29', which is very nearly correct. Bering likewise determined the location of Cape Lopatka at 51° N. lat.

At Bolsheretsk Bering collected his men, distributed provisions and powder, left the Fortuna with a crew of one corporal and eleven men, and on the 14th of July steered for Okhotsk. After a fortunate, but not otherwise remarkable, journey, he reached St. Petersburg on the 1st of March, 1730. "From the perusal of his ship's journal," says Berch, "one becomes convinced that our famous Bering was an extraordinarily able and skillful officer; and if we consider his defective instruments, his great hardships, and the obstacles that had to be overcome, his observations and the great accuracy of his journal deserve the highest praise. He was a man who did Russia honor."

Bering had thus done good work in the service of Asiatic geography. He had shown that he possessed an explorer's most important qualification—never to make positive statements where there is no definite knowledge. By virtue of his extensive travels in northeastern Asia, his scientific qualifications, his ability to make careful, accurate observations, and his own astronomical determinations, and by virtue of his direct acquaintance with Kosyrefsky's and Lushin's works, he was in a position to form a more correct opinion than any contemporary concerning this part of the earth. In spite of these great advantages in his favor, his work was rejected by the leading authorities in St. Petersburg. It is true that Bering found sincere support in the able and influential Ivan Kirilovich Kiriloff, but to no one else could he turn for a just and competent judge. The great Russian empire had not yet produced a scientific aristocracy. The Academy of Science, which had been founded five or six years previous, was not composed of able scholars, but of a number of more or less talented contestants for honor and fame,—of men who occupied a prominent yet disputed position in a foreign and hostile country—young, hot-headed Germans and Frenchmen who had not yet achieved complete literary recognition. Such people are stern and severe judges. Bering was unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the German Gerhard Fr. Müller and the Frenchman Joseph Nicolas De l'Isle.

Although Müller had not yet seen Siberia, and although it was not until ten years later that he succeeded in building that geographical card-house which Captain Cook so noiselessly blew down, he nevertheless, even at that time, on every occasion expressed the opinion that Bering had not reached the northeast point of Asia, and that his voyage had consequently not accomplished its purpose. De l'Isle was Bering's intellectual antipode. As a geographer he delighted in moving about on the borderland of the world's unexplored regions. His element was that of vaguest conjecture,—the boldest combinations of known and unknown; and even as an old man he did not shrink from the task of constructing, from insufficient accounts of travels and apocryphal sailor-stories, a map of the Pacific, of which not a single line has been retained. He overstrained himself on the fame of his deceased brother, whose methods, inclinations, and valuable geographical collections he had inherited, but unfortunately not that intuitive insight which made Guillaume De l'Isle the leading geographer of his age. Hence, as a geographer, he was merely an echo of his brother.

One of Guillaume De l'Isle's most famous essays had been on the island of Yezo. In 1643 the stadtholder of Batavia, the able Van Diemen, sent the ships Kastrikon and Breskens under the command of Martin de Vries and Hendrick Corneliszoon Schaep to Japan for the purpose of navigating the east coast of the island of Nipon (Hondo), and thence go in search of America by sailing in a northwesterly direction to the 45th degree of latitude; but in case they did not find America, which people continued to believe lay in these regions, they were to turn toward the northeast and seek the coast of Asia on the 56th degree of latitude. De Vries partly carried out his chimerical project. At 40° north latitude he saw the coast of Nipon, two degrees farther north, the snow-capped mountains of Yezo, and thence sailed between the two Kuriles lying farthest to the south, which he called Staaten Eiland and Kompagniland. He then continued his voyage into the Sea of Okhotsk to 48° north latitude, where he turned about, saw Yezo in latitude 45°, but came, without noticing La Perouse Strait, over to Saghalin, which he considered a part of Yezo, and as he followed the coast of Saghalin to Cape Patience in latitude 48°, he thought Yezo a very extensive island on the eastern coast of Asia. Through the cartography of the seventeenth century, for example Witsen's and Homann's Atlas, but especially through Guillaume De l'Isle's globes and maps, these erroneous ideas were scattered over the earth, and, when the first accounts of Kamchatka, without being accompanied by a single astronomical determination, reached Europe, many believed that this land was identical with Yezo. But as De Vries had left some determinations of latitude and longitude which showed that the island must be very near Japan, some went even so far as to suppose that it was contiguous to Nipon; indeed, Guillaume De l'Isle's essay attempted to prove this. Thus three lands were made one, while De Vries's Staaten Eiland and Kompagniland, which could find no place in this series, were forced eastward into the Pacific as large tracts of land separated from Kamchatka-Yezo and from each other by narrow straits. But this is not all. The Portuguese cosmographer Texeïra had in 1649, in these same regions, indicated a coast projecting far to the east toward America, seen by Juan de Gama on a voyage to New Spain from the Philippine Islands. This Gamaland was now described as a continuation of Kompagniland. In Homann's Atlas, 1709, it is represented as a part of America, and Guillaume De l'Isle varied on the theme in a different way.[41]

Unfortunately these ideas held sway in the scientific world when Bering, in 1730, returned. Furthermore, scholars thought these ideas were confirmed by Swedish prisoners of war who had returned from Siberia, especially by the famous Tabbert, or Strahlenberg, as he was later called, whose various imaginary chart-outlines had been adopted in Homann's Atlas, 1727, and in other West European geographical works then in vogue.[42]

Bering returned. His sober accounts and accurate maps, in which there was nothing imaginary whatever, were now to take up the fight against these prejudices. Bering declared that he had sailed around Kamchatka without having seen anything of these lands, although he had—in a different direction, however—noticed signs of land. On his map, Kamchatka was represented as a definitely defined region, and hence Guillaume De l'Isle's structure had received its first blow, in case Bering's representations should be accepted. But Bering's reputation had been undermined in still another direction. The above-mentioned Cossack chief Shestakoff had, during his sojourn in Russia, distributed various rough contour sketches of northeastern Asia. This brave warrior, however, knew just as little about wielding a pen as he did a pencil. The matter of a few degrees more or less in some coast-lines did not seriously trouble him. Even his own drawings did not agree. Northeast of the Chukchee peninsula he had sketched an extensive country, which Bering had not seen.

It is characteristic of Joseph De l'Isle that he accepted both Shestakoff and Strahlenberg, and as late as in 1753 still clung to their outlines. In the first place, it satisfied his family pride to be able to maintain his brother's views of the cartography of these regions (and of his views Strahlenberg's were but an echo), and it moreover satisfied his predisposition to that which was vague and hypothetical. At first De l'Isle succeeded in carrying out his wishes, and in 1737 the Academy published a map of Asia in which it would prove extremely difficult to find any trace of Bering's discoveries.[43] It was accordingly quite the proper thing to consider Bering's first expedition wholly, or at least to a great extent, unsuccessful. In the literature of that day there are evidences of this, especially in Steller's writings. He treats Bering with scornful superiority, which is particularly out of place, as he shows himself a poor judge in geographical matters.[44] Kiriloff, who in his general map of Russia in 1734[45] unreservedly accepted Bering's map, was the only man who gave him due recognition. The Academy could not persuade itself to make use of the only scientifically obtained outline map in existence of the remotest regions of the empire, until Bering, many years afterwards, had won full recognition in Paris, Nuremberg, and London. Bering's map was made in Moscow in 1731, and the Russian government presented it to the king of Poland,[46] who gave it to the Jesuit father Du Halde. He had it printed and inserted in D'Anville's Nouvelle Atlas de la Chine, a supplement to his large work on China, to which we have several times referred.[47] Of this work Dr. Campbell later gave an account in Harris's Collection of Voyages, and it was, furthermore, the basis of the better class of geographical works on eastern Asia of last century until Captain Cook's day. A copy of the eastern half of the map will be found in the appendix to this treatise.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] A port on the southern coast of Kamchatka.

[41] See Maps II. and III.

[42] Note 33.

[43] Note 34.

[44] Note 35.

[45] Note 36.

[46] Note 37.

[47] Note 38.

[PART II.]
THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION.

[CHAPTER VIII.]
BERING'S PLANS FOR A SECOND EXPEDITION.—THE GREATEST GEOGRAPHICAL ENTERPRISE EVER UNDERTAKEN.

Arctic exploration has a bewitching power over its devotees. Bering and his companions did not escape the enchantment. Hardly had they returned from a five years' sojourn in the extremest corner of the world, when they declared themselves willing to start out again. As they had met with so much doubt and opposition from scholars,—had learned that the world's youngest marine lacked the courage to recognize its own contributions to science, and, furthermore, as the Admiralty thought it had given strong reasons for doubting Bering's results,[48] he proposed to make his future explorations on a larger scale and remove all doubt, by charting the whole of this disputed part of the globe.

April 30, 1730, only two months after his return, he presented two plans to the Admiralty. These have been found and published by Berch, and are of the greatest importance in judging of Bering's true relation to the Great Northern Expedition. In the first of these propositions he sets forth a series of suggestions for the administration of East Siberia, and for a better utilization of its resources. He desired, among other things, missionary work among the Yakuts, better discipline among the East Siberian Cossacks, more honesty among the yassak-collectors, the opening of iron mines at Okhotsk and Udinsk, and various other things. But it was never his intention to carry out these propositions himself, and it was a great mistake for the government to burden his instructions with such purely administrative work.

His second proposition is incomparably more interesting. In this he indicates the general outline of his Great Northern Expedition, the greatest geographical enterprise that the world has hitherto known. This document shows that he was the originator of the plan, something that has been contradicted, and but for this document might still stand contradicted. He proposed to start out from Kamchatka to explore and chart the western coast of America and establish commercial relations with that country, thence to visit Japan and Amoor for the same purpose, and finally to chart either by land or sea the Arctic coast of Siberia,—namely, from the Obi to the Lena.[49] Through these three enterprises and his former expedition, it was Bering's object to fill the vacant space on his chart between the known West and the known East,—between the Kara Sea and the Japan Islands. He refused to corroborate his first observations by again visiting the same localities, and he rightly concluded, that absolute proof of the separation of the continents would be ascertained if the American coast were charted.

The political situation in the empire favored the adoption of Bering's plans. The Duchess of Courland, Anna Ivanovna, had just (1730) ascended the throne. With her the foreigners and Peter's reform party again came into power, and with much more zeal than skill, they sought to continue Peter's work. Anna aimed to shine in Europe as the ruler of a great power, and in Russia as a West European queen. Europe was to be awed by Russian greatness, and Russia by European wisdom. In one of his high-flown speeches Czar Peter had given assurance that science would forsake its abodes in West Europe, and in the fullness of time cast a halo of immortal glory around the name of Russia.

It was necessary to speed this time. Anna and her coadjutors had an insatiable desire for the splendor and exterior luster of culture. Like upstarts in wealth they sought to surround themselves with some of that glory which only gray-haired honor can bestow. One of the surest ways to this glory was through the equipment of scientific expeditions. They had at their disposal an academy of science, a fleet, and the resources of a mighty empire. The sacrifice of a few thousand human lives troubled them but little, and they exerted themselves to make the enterprise as large and sensational as possible. Bering's above-mentioned proposition was taken as a foundation for these plans, but when, after the lapse of two years, his proposition left the various departments of the government—the Senate, the Academy, and the Admiralty—it had assumed such proportions that he found great difficulty in recognizing it.

After having on April 30, 1730, submitted to the Admiralty his new proposition, together with the accounts and reports of his first expedition, Bering was sent to Moscow, where Anna maintained her court during the first few years of her reign. Here he laid his plans before the Senate, and made the map before referred to; but all the leading men were then too much occupied with court intrigues to be able to give his plans any of their attention. Separated from his family, he wearied of life in Moscow, and on January 5, 1732, the Senate gave him leave of absence to go to St. Petersburg, on condition that Chaplin and the steward would conclude the reports. Moreover, the Senate ordered that the Admiralty should pay Bering's claims against the government for his services. In view of the hardships he had endured, he received 1,000 rubles, double the amount to which he was entitled according to the regulations of the department. Almost simultaneously he was promoted, in regular succession, to the position of capitain-commandeur in the Russian fleet, the next position below that of rear-admiral.

In the spring of 1732, Anna, Biron, and Ostermann had succeeded in crushing the Old Russian opposition. The leaders of this party, especially the family of Dolgoruki, had been either banished to Siberia or scattered about in the provinces and in fortresses, and now there was nothing to hinder the government in pursuing its plans. As early as April 17, the Empress[50] ordered that Bering's proposition should be executed, and charged the Senate to take the necessary steps for this purpose. The Senate, presided over by Ivan Kiriloff, an enthusiastic admirer of Peter the Great, acted with dispatch. On May 2, it promulgated two ukases, in which it declared the objects of the expedition, and sought to indicate the necessary means. Although the Senate here in the main followed Bering's own proposition and made a triple expedition (an American, a Japanese, and an Arctic), it nevertheless betrayed a peculiar inclination to burden the chief of the expedition with tasks most remote from his own original plans. It directed him not only to explore the Shantar Islands and reach the Spanish possessions in America, something that Bering had never thought of, but also included in its ukase a series of recommendations for the development of Siberia,—recommendations which Bering had previously made to the government, and which had already provoked some definite efforts, as the exiled Pissarjeff, a former officer of the Senate, had been removed to Okhotsk to develop that region and extend the maritime relations on the Pacific.

He seems, however, not to have accomplished anything, and the Senate thought it feasible to burden Bering with a part of this task. He was directed to supply Okhotsk with more inhabitants, to introduce cattle-raising on the Pacific coast, to found schools in Okhotsk for both elementary and nautical instruction, to establish a dock-yard in this out-of-the-way corner, to transport men and horses to Yudomskaya Krest, and to establish iron-works at Yakutsk, Udinsk, and other places. But this was simply the beginning of the avalanche, and as it rolled along down through the Admiralty and Academy, it assumed most startling dimensions. These authorities aspired to nothing less than raising all human knowledge one step higher. The Admiralty desired the expedition to undertake the nautical charting of the Old World from Archangel to Nipon—even to Mexico; and the Academy could not be satisfied with anything less than a scientific exploration of all northern Asia. As a beginning, Joseph Nicolas De l'Isle, professor of astronomy at the Academy, was instructed to give a graphic account of the present state of knowledge of the North Pacific, and in a memoir to give Bering instructions how to find America from the East. The Senate also decreed that the former's brother, Louis, surnamed La Croyère, an adventurer of somewhat questionable character, should accompany the expedition as astronomer. Thus decree after decree followed in rapid succession. On December 28, the Senate issued a lengthy ukase, which, in sixteen paragraphs, outlined in extenso the nautico-geographical explorations to be undertaken by the expedition. Commodore Bering and Lieut. Chirikoff, guided by the instructions of the Academy, were to sail to America with two ships for the purpose of charting the American coast. They were to be accompanied by La Croyère, who, with the assistance of the surveyors Krassilnikoff and Popoff, was to undertake a series of local observations through Siberia, along several of the largest rivers of the country and in its more important regions, across the Pacific, and also along the coast of the New World. With three ships Spangberg was to sail to the Kurile Islands, Japan, and the still more southerly parts of Asia, while simultaneously the coast from Okhotsk to Uda, to Tugur, to the mouth of the Amoor, and the coasts of the Shantar Islands and Saghalin were to be charted.

Even these tasks exceeded all reasonable demands, and not until several generations later did Cook, La Perouse, and Vancouver succeed in accomplishing what the Russian Senate in a few pen-strokes directed Bering to do. And yet, not until the government touched the Arctic side of this task, did it entirely lose sight of all reason. Its instructions to Bering were, not only to chart the coast of the Old World from the Dwina to the Pacific, to explore harbors and estuaries along this coast, to describe the country and study its natural resources, especially its mineral wealth, but also to dispatch an expedition to the Bear Islands, off the mouth of the Kolyma, and to see to it that his earlier trip to the Chukchee peninsula was repeated, besides sailing from there to America, as the results of his former voyage "were unsatisfactory," reliable information concerning that country having been received from the Cossack Melnikoff.

All these expeditions were to start out from the great Siberian rivers,—from the Dwina to the Obi with two vessels under the charge of the Admiralty; from the Obi and Lena with three twenty-four-oared boats, two of which were to meet between these two rivers, and the third was to sail around Bering's Peninsula (this Reclus calls the Chukchee peninsula), or, if America proved to be connected with that country, it was to attempt to find European colonies. The orders of the Senate were, furthermore, to the effect that surveyors should be sent out in advance for the preliminary charting of these river-mouths, and to erect light-houses, establish magazines for convenient relays, and procure provisions and other necessaries,—very excellent directions, all of which, however, were so many meaningless words after they had left the government departments. Our age, which still has in mind the Franklin expeditions—the English parallel—is able to form an idea of these gigantic demands, and yet the Senate did not hesitate to load the organization of all this upon the shoulders of one man. Bering was made chief of all the enterprises east of the Ural Mountains. At the Obi and the Lena, at Okhotsk and Kamchatka, he was to furnish ships, provisions, and transportation.

But in spite of all that was vague and visionary in these plans, they had nevertheless a certain homogeneity. They were all nautical expeditions for nautical purposes and nautico-geographical investigations. Then the Academy added its demands, making everything doubly complicated. It demanded a scientific exploration of all Siberia and Kamchatka,—not only an account of these regions based on astronomical determinations and geodetic surveys, on minute descriptions and artistically executed landscape pictures, on barometric, thermometric, and aerometric observations, as well as investigations in all the branches of natural history, but it demanded also a detailed presentation of the ethnography, colonization, and history of the country, together with a multitude of special investigations in widely different directions. The leading spirits in these enterprises were two young and zealous Germans, the chemist Johann Georg Gmelin and the historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller, twenty-eight and twenty-four years of age respectively, members of the Academy, and later, highly respected scholars. Müller was a personal friend of Bering, and through him got a desire to participate in the expedition.

Kiriloff, the secretary of the Senate, himself a successful student of geography, supported the efforts of the Academy, and most generously gratified all the exaggerated demands that only imperious and inexperienced devotees of science could present. Indeed, Bering could not but finally consider himself fortunate in escaping a sub-expedition to Central Asia, one of Kiriloff's pet plans, which the latter afterwards took upon himself to carry out. The Academic branch of the expedition, which thus came to consist of the astronomer La Croyère, the physicist Gmelin (the elder), and the historian Müller, was right luxuriously equipped. It was accompanied by two landscape painters, one surgeon, one interpreter, one instrument-maker, five surveyors, six scientific assistants, and fourteen body-guards. Moreover, this convoy grew like an avalanche, as it worked its way into Siberia. La Croyère had nine wagon-loads of instruments, among them telescopes thirteen and fifteen feet in length. These Academical gentlemen had at least thirty-six horses, and on the large rivers, they could demand boats with cabins. They carried with them a library of several hundred volumes, not only of scientific and historical works in their specialties, but also of the Latin classics and such light reading as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. Besides, they had seventy reams of writing paper and an enormous supply of artists' colors, draughting materials and apparatus. All archives were to be open to them, all Siberian government authorities were to be at their service and furnish interpreters, guides, and laborers. The Professors, as they were called, constituted an itinerant academy. They drafted their own instructions, and no superior authority took upon itself to make these subservient to the interests of the expedition as a whole. From February, 1734, they held one or two weekly meetings and passed independent resolutions. It became a part of Bering's task to move this cumbersome machine, this learned republic, from St. Petersburg to Kamchatka, to care for their comforts and conveniences, and render possible the flank movements and side sallies that either scientific demands or their own freaks of will might dictate. In the original instructions such directions were by no means few. But Bering had no authority over these men. They were willing to recognize his authority only when they needed his assistance. None of them except Bering and his former associates had any idea of the mode and conditions of travel in that barbarous country. That there should be lack of understanding between men with such different objects in view as academists and naval officers, is not very strange. Their only bond of union was the Senate's senseless ukase. If it had been the purpose of the government to exhibit a human parallel to the "happy families" of menageries, it could hardly have acted differently. In all his movements Bering was hampered by this academical deadweight. The Professors not only showed a lack of appreciation of Bering's efforts in their behalf, but they also stormed him with complaints, filled their records with them, and concluded them—characteristically enough—with a resolution to prefer formal charges against him before the Senate.

Only a new state, as the Russian then was, only a government that recently had seen the will of one energetic man turn topsy-turvy a whole people's mode of life, and yet had preserved a fanciful faith in Peter the Great's teachings—his supreme disregard for obstacles,—only such a government could even think of heaping such mountains of enterprises one upon the other, or demand that any one man, and a foreigner at that, should carry them into execution. Peter's spirit undoubtedly hovered over these plans, but the marble sarcophagus in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul had long since received his earthly remains, and without his personal energy the Senate's plans were but the projects of a dazzled fancy. On paper the Senate might indeed refer Bering to various ways and means; it might enjoin upon the Siberian authorities to do everything in their power to promote the progress of the various expeditions; it might direct its secretaries to prepare a very humane declamation denouncing the practice of any violence against, or oppression of, the weak nomadic tribes in the East; but it could not by a few pen-strokes increase the natural resources of Siberia, or change the unwillingness of the local authorities to accede to the inordinate demands which the nautical expedition necessarily had to make, nor could it make roads in the wild forest-regions where only the Yakut and Tunguse roamed about. The Senate's humanitarian phrases were of but little significance to the explorers when it was found necessary to compel the nomads of the East to supply what the government had failed to furnish. The Senate had ventured so near the extreme limits of the possible, that it could not but end by crossing the border and demanding the impossible. These numerous expeditions, scattered over half a continent, were exposed to so many unforeseeable accidents and misfortunes, that the government, in order to render support and retain its control, would necessarily have to be in regular communication. But east of Moscow there was no mail service. Hence the government instructed Bering to establish, on consultation with the local authorities, postal communication, partly monthly and partly bi-monthly, from Moscow to Kamchatka, to the Chinese border by way of Irkutsk, and by a new route to Uda,—as though such a matter could be accomplished through consultation. The Senate might have known, and in fact did know, that in the mountainous forest-region between Yakutsk and Okhotsk (a distance of about seven hundred miles) there was but one single Russian hut, and that all the requisites for a mail service—men, horses, and roads—demanded unlimited means and most extensive preparations.

A number of plans and propositions of minor importance are here omitted. The object has been to show, in a succinct review, the origin of the Great Northern Expedition, its enormous compass, and the grouping of its various enterprises about Vitus Bering as its chief. Von Baer classes the tasks to be accomplished by Bering, each of which demanded separately equipped expeditions, under seven heads: namely, astronomical observations and determinations in Siberia, physico-geographical explorations, historic-ethnographical studies, the charting of the Arctic coast, the navigation of the East Siberian coast, and the discovery of Japan and America. This writer adds that no other geographical enterprise, not even the charting of China by the Jesuits, Mackenzie's travels, or Franklin's expeditions, can in greatness or sacrifice be compared with the gigantic undertakings that were loaded upon Bering, and carried out by him.[51]

It would no doubt be wrong to ascribe the over-burdening of Bering's plans to any one man, and for a foreign author, who but imperfectly understands the Russian literature of that period, to do so, would be more than foolish. Kiriloff, the secretary of the Senate, had great zeal for geographical explorations, and did all in his power to further the plans of Czar Peter. It has been proved that Bering's proposition was presented after a conference with Kiriloff, and that as long as he lived, he assisted Bering by word and deed. Furthermore, it seems probable that, in order to promote the exploration of Siberia, he prevented the Admiralty from sending Bering's expedition by sea south of Africa. However, it is undoubtedly a fact that Bering's plan reached its final proportions as a result of the discussions between Count Ostermann, the influential courtier and statesman, (who evidently landed in Russia in company with Bering in 1701), Soimonoff, an officer of the Senate, Kiriloff, and Golovin, chief of the Admiralty, and these men would hardly have consulted the opinions of Bering, who often and most emphatically disapproved of the additions that had been made to his plans. Moreover, as a result of the distrust which his first expedition inspired in Russia, he was in an insecure and unfortunate position. But he had reason to complain of other things. The gigantic task assigned to him demanded a despotic will endowed with dictatorial power. Bering lacked both, especially the latter.

The Senate exhausted itself in minute hints, directions, and propositions, instead of issuing definite orders concerning the necessary means. Unfortunately, too, numerous and exaggerated complaints had been made in regard to the suffering which Bering's first expedition had caused the Kamchatkans, and on this account the government was foolish enough to bind the chief's hands, while it simultaneously overloaded his shoulders. Through injudicious instructions he was made dependent upon his subordinates. It was bad enough that he was not to be permitted to take any decisive steps in Siberia without first consulting and coming to an agreement with the local authorities,—the governor of Tobolsk, the lieutenant-governor of Irkutsk, and the voivode of Yakutsk. On account of the great distances and the wretched roads such proceedings were well-nigh impossible. The government should have known that these authorities only under the most peremptory orders would comply with demands liable to exhaust the resources of the country and ruin the thinly-populated and poverty-stricken districts. This was, indeed, bad enough, but matters were much aggravated when the Senate ordered him to take action in all important questions, only after deliberation with his officers, and to refer every loading measure to a commission. Such a method of procedure seems to us entirely incomprehensible. But Sokoloff, who was himself a Russian naval officer, says on this point, that the laws of the empire, which at that time were in full force, required of every superior officer that he should consult his subordinates before inaugurating any new movement. In its instructions to Bering the Senate expressly emphasized this decree of the law, and it actually went so far as to order him, even in matters of comparative unimportance, to seek the opinion of his Academical associates, and always act in the strictest accordance with his Russian colleague Chirikoff's propositions.

The chiefs of the different branches of the expedition were of course subject to the same regulation. In this way Bering was deprived of a sovereign chief's power and authority, and it afforded him but little reparation that the government gave him the power to reduce or promote an officer,—only naval officers, however. Necessary regard for the needs of the service and for his own principles forbade him to use this weapon in that arbitrary manner which alone could have neutralized the unfortunate influence of the government laws. Hence this feature of his instructions, besides causing much delay, became a source of the most incredible troubles and aggravations, which, as we shall see later, laid him in his grave on the bleak coasts of Bering Island.

Everything carefully considered, it could have surprised no one if the Northern Expedition had collapsed in its very greatness, and it was without any doubt due to Bering that this did not happen. In many respects Bering was unqualified to lead such an expedition into a barbarous country, surrounded as he was with incapable, uneducated, and corruptible assistants, pestered by calumniators and secret or avowed enemies in every quarter, to whom the government seemed more disposed to listen than to him. More just than arbitrary, more considerate than hasty, more humane than his position permitted, he nevertheless had one important quality, an honest, genuine, and tenacious spirit of perseverance, and this saved the expedition from dissolution. The government had sent him in pursuit of a golden chariot, and he found more than the linchpin. The realization, however, was far from that anticipated by the government. Many of the projects of the original plan were but partially accomplished, and others were not even attempted; but in spite of this, the results attained by Bering and his associates will stand as boundary-posts in the history of geographical discovery. Many of these men sealed their work with their lives, and added a luster to the name of Russia,[52] which later explorers have maintained.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Note 39.

[49] Note 40.

[50] H. H. Bancroft, Vol. XXXIII., p. 42, History of Alaska, San Francisco, 1886, is in error when he states that this empress was Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. Anna Ivanovna, a daughter of Peter the Great's half-brother Ivan, was at this time on the throne. She reigned from 1730 to 1740. Elizabeth Petrovna did not become empress until 1741.—Tr.

[51] H. H. Bancroft, History of Alaska, p. 42, says: "The second Kamchatka expedition ... was the most brilliant effort toward scientific discovery which unto this time had been made by any government."—Tr.

[52] Note 41.

[CHAPTER IX.]
THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION ON ITS WAY THROUGH SIBERIA.—DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS ENCOUNTERED AND OVERCOME.

In the early part of the year 1733, the expedition began to leave St. Petersburg by detachments. It consisted of the chief Vitus Bering (his Russian name was Ivan Ivanovich Bering), Captains Spangberg and Chirikoff, eight lieutenants, sixteen mates, twelve physicians, seven priests, skippers, stewards, various apprentices, ship-carpenters, other workmen, soldiers and sailors,—in all about five hundred and seventy men. Of these, three officers and one hundred and fifty-seven men—a number which was greatly increased in Siberia—were assigned duty in the Arctic expedition, the remainder in the Pacific expeditions. In this estimate, the Academists, constituting an expedition of thirty or forty men, are not considered. The list of names of those engaged in these expeditions throws interesting light on Russian social relations of that period. Over half of the officers, many mates, and all of the physicians were foreigners. The Senate sought to inspire the zeal of the officers by large increase of salary and promotion in rank and service after a successfully completed expedition, but the rank and file were to be forced to a performance of their duties by threats of cruel punishments and a continued stay in Siberia. It had been the intention to recruit the expedition through the voluntary service of Russians, but the native officers showed but little inclination in this direction, and it was found necessary to fill the vacancies by draft. Van Haven assures us that Bering's expedition was looked upon in St. Petersburg as a mild sort of banishment.

The necessary instruments and some provisions were obtained in St. Petersburg. The naval officers were supplied with quadrants, thermometers, and nocturnals, the surveyors with astrolabes and Gunter's-chains, and the Academists were authorized to take from the library of the Academy all the works they needed, and, at the expense of the crown, to purchase such as the library did not contain. La Croyère carried with him a whole magazine of instruments. For presents to the natives two thousand rubles were appropriated. In N. Novgorod and Kazan some other necessaries were obtained, but the enormous ship-supplies and provisions, besides men, horses, barges and other river boats, were to be provided by the Siberian towns and country districts.

The Siberian authorities received orders to make great preparations. They were to buy venison, fish, and cod liver oil, erect light-houses and magazines along the Arctic coast, and dispatch commissions with large transports to the Pacific coast, so as to enable Bering to begin his work of discovery without delay. These preparations were to be followed by efforts toward the founding of various works, such as iron and salt works at Okhotsk, a smaller furnace at Yakutsk for the use of the expedition, and, through the utilization of the saccharine qualities of the "bear's claw,"[53] a distillery was also to be established on the peninsula of Kamchatka. It is unnecessary to say that all of these propositions were buried in the Siberian government departments.

Calculations were made for a six years' expedition. The leaders of each branch of the expedition were authorized to repeat any unsuccessful adventure the succeeding summer. All were prepared for a long stay in the extreme northeast—many, indeed, remained there forever—hence, most of the officers, among them Bering and Spangberg, were accompanied by their wives and children. On this account the expedition seemed more than ever a national migration on a small scale.

The first start was made February 1, 1733. Spangberg, with some laborers and the heaviest marine stores, went directly to Okhotsk to expedite the ship-building on the Pacific coast. Lieutenant Ofzyn went to Kazan to collect supplies. Bering started out March 18, in order as quickly as possible to reach Tobolsk, whence the first Arctic expedition was to be sent out. In the course of the summer, the larger caravans arrived at this place. Simultaneously heavy supplies were brought in from West Siberia by Bering's men. Here, also, the construction of the vessel for the expedition, the shallop Tobol, was begun. Only the Academists were yet in St. Petersburg, where they were receiving the attention of the official world. At an audience, the Empress bade them farewell in the most solemn manner. She allowed them to kiss her hand, and assured them of her most gracious favor. On the succeeding day, the other members of the imperial family manifested similar sympathy. Then, however, the difficulties began. That these heavily-laden gentlemen could not even in St. Petersburg secure adequate means of transportation, makes quite a comical impression. On this account they were detained until late in August, and they would no doubt have been unable to reach Siberia in 1733, if Bering had not left for them in Tver a conveniently equipped vessel, which carried them the same autumn down the Volga to Kazan. They did not reach Tobolsk, however, until January, 1734. Bering, who was to be supplied by them with surveyors and instruments for his Arctic expedition, and who could not, before their arrival, form an estimate of the size of his river transports to be used in the spring, was obliged repeatedly and very forcibly to urge them to make haste. Here the disagreements began, and were continued concerning petty affairs, which history finds it unnecessary to dwell upon.

On May 2, 1734, the Tobol was launched amid the firing of cannon, the blare of trumpets, and the merry draining of goblets. The vessel had a keel of 70 feet, was 15 feet wide, and 7 feet deep. It carried two masts, some small cannon, and a crew of 56 men, among them first mate Sterlegoff and two cartographers, under the command of Lieut. Ofzyn. As the provincial government had secured neither magazines nor provisions, nor attended to any other preparations on the Arctic coast, the necessary supplies, which were to be stored north of Obdorsk, were loaded on four rafts, which, with a force of 30 men, accompanied Ofzyn. On May 14, he received his Admiralty instructions from Bering, and, saluted by cannon, the First Arctic Expedition stood up the Irtish for the Polar seas.

Five days later, Bering, with the main command and the Academists, left Tobolsk and took different routes for Yakutsk, which had been selected as the central point for the future enterprises of the expedition. In October, 1734, he arrived at this place, bringing with him a quantity of materials. The next spring, Chirikoff came with the greater part of the supplies, and during the year following, this dull Siberian city was the scene of no little activity. On his arrival, however, Bering found that no preparations whatever had been made for him. In spite of instructions and orders from the government, nothing had been done toward charting the Arctic coast or for the expediting of the heavily loaded transports on the way to Okhotsk. Nor did Bering find that the authorities were even kindly disposed toward him. Yet, in the course of the next six months, he had two large ships built for the Arctic expedition, and when his own supplies arrived by way of the central Siberian river-route, described in the first part of this work, these vessels, together with four barges, were equipped and furnished with provisions, and in June, 1735, were ready for a start. These two ships—the sloop Yakutsk, Lieut. Pronchisheff, first mate Chelyuskin, surveyor Chekin, and about fifty men, and the decked boat Irkutsk, Lieut. Peter Lassenius, with a surveyor, first mate, and also about fifty men—had most difficult tasks to accomplish. The former was to cruise from the mouth of the Lena, along the whole coast of the Taimyr peninsula, and enter the mouth of the Yenisei. The latter was to follow the Arctic coast in an easterly direction to the Bering peninsula, cruise along its coast, and ascertain the relative positions of Asia and America, and, if it was a geographical possibility, to sail down to the peninsula of Kamchatka. He also had instructions to find the islands off the mouth of the Kolyma (the Bear Islands). From this it is evident that Lassenius's expedition was of the greater geographical interest. Moreover, it had to do with one of the main questions of Bering's whole activity—the discovery and charting of the North Pacific—and hence it is not a mere accident that Bering selected for this expedition one of his own countrymen, or that he assigned the charting of northeastern Asia and the discovery of America and Japan, to chiefs of Danish birth, Lassenius and Spangberg. Nothing is known of the earlier life of Lassenius. In service he was the oldest of Bering's lieutenants. Shortly before the departure of the expedition, he was taken into the Russian fleet, and Gmelin says of him, that he was an able and experienced naval officer, volunteered his services to the expedition, and began his work with intrepidity. All attempts to trace his birth and family relations have proved fruitless.

On the 30th of June, 1735, both expeditions left Yakutsk, and thus the charting of the whole of the Arctic coast of Siberia was planned and inaugurated by Bering himself. He could now apply all his energies to the Pacific expeditions. He constructed a multitude of river-craft, and erected barracks, magazines, winter-huts, and wharves along the river-route to Okhotsk. In the vicinity of Yakutsk he established an iron foundry and furnace, whence the various vessels were supplied with anchors and other articles of iron. In fact, he made this place the emporium for those heavy supplies that in the years 1735-36 were brought from South and West Siberia, and which later were to be sent to Okhotsk.

At Okhotsk the exiled Major-General Pissarjeff was in command. He had been sent there as a government official, with authority on the Pacific coast and in Kamchatka, to develop the country and pave the way for the expeditions to follow, by making roads and harbors, erecting buildings in Okhotsk, introducing agriculture,—in fact, make this coast fit for human habitation. The government had given him ample power, but as he accomplished nothing, he was succeeded by Captain Pavlutski as chief in Kamchatka, and Pissarjeff was reduced to a sort of harbor-master in Okhotsk. A command that had been sent to his assistance under first mate Bireff, he nearly starved to death; the men deserted and the town remained the same rookery as ever.

In this condition Spangberg found affairs in the winter of 1734-35. With his usual energy he had pushed his transports to Yakutsk in the summer preceding, and with the same boats he proceeded up the Aldan and Maya, but winter came on and his boats were frozen in on the Yudoma. He started out on foot by the familiar route across the Stanovoi Mountains to Okhotsk, which place he reached after enduring great hardship and suffering; but even here he found no roof for shelter. He was forced to subsist on carcasses and roots, and not until the spring fishing began and a provision caravan sent by Bering arrived, did he escape this dire distress. In the early summer, Pissarjeff put in an appearance, and very soon a bitter and fatal enmity arose between these two men.

Spangberg was born in Jerne near Esbjerg in Jutland (Denmark), probably about the year 1698. He was the son of well-to-do parents of the middle class. In the Jerne churchyard there is still to be seen a beautiful monument on the grave of his brother, the "estimable and well-born Chr. Spangberg," nothing else is known of his early life. In 1720, he entered the Russian fleet as a lieutenant of the fourth rank, and for a time ran the packet-boat between Kronstadt and Lübeck, whereupon he took part in Bering's first expedition as second in command. In 1732, for meritorious service on this expedition, he was made a captain of the third rank. He was an able, shrewd, and energetic man, a practical seaman, active and vehement, inconsiderate of the feelings of others, tyrannical and avaricious. He spoke the Russian language only imperfectly. His fame preceded him throughout all Siberia, and Sokoloff says that many thought him some general, incognito, others an escaped convict. The natives of Siberia feared him and called him Martin Petrovich Kosar, or in ironical praise, "Batushka" (old fellow). He had many enemies. Complaints and accusations were showered upon him, but it would most certainly be wrong to ascribe to them any great significance. Siberia is the land of slander. All Russian officials were corruptible, and the honest men among those who stood nearest to Peter himself could literally be counted on one's fingers. While in Siberia, Spangberg is said to have acquired the possession of many horses, valuable furs, and other goods of which the authorities had forced the sale. When the Senate, after his great voyage of discovery to Japan, had treated him unjustly, he left Siberia arbitrarily in 1745, and, without leave of absence, set out for St. Petersburg, where he was summoned before a court-martial and condemned to death; but this was finally commuted to his being reduced to a lieutenant for three months. He remained in the service and died, in 1761, as a captain of the first rank. In Okhotsk he was accompanied by his wife and son.[54]

But his opponent was a still more remarkable man. Major-General Pissarjeff had been a favorite of Peter the Great, director of the military academy, and a high officer of the Senate. He had received a careful education abroad, and moved in the very highest circles of society. In a quarrel with Vice-Chancellor Shafiroff, in 1722, however, he had incurred Peter's wrath, whereupon he was for a time deprived of all official rank and banished to the Ladoga canal as overseer of this great enterprise. Later he was pardoned, but when, in 1727, he conspired against Prince Menshikoff, he was deprived of everything, knouted, branded, and then exiled to Siberia as a colonist. After a series of vicissitudes he appeared, in the capacity of harbor-master at Okhotsk, but the government gave him no rank; he was not even permitted to cover his brand. This old man, made vicious by a long and unjust banishment, became Bering's evil spirit. In spite of his sixty or seventy years, he was as restless, fiery and vehement in both speech and action as when a youth, dissolute, corruptible, and slanderous—a false and malicious babbler, a full-fledged representative of the famous Siberian "school for scandal." For six long years he persecuted the expedition with his hatred and falsehoods, and was several times within an ace of overthrowing everything. He lived in a stockaded fort a few miles in the country, while Spangberg's quarters were down by the sea, on the so-called Kushka, a strip of land in the Okhota delta, where the town was to be founded. The power of each was unrestrained. Both were dare-devils who demanded an obedience which foretold the speedy overthrow of each. Both sought to maintain their authority through imprisonment and corporal punishment. Thus they wrangled for a year, Pissarjeff, meanwhile, sending numerous complaints to Yakutsk and St. Petersburg. But Spangberg was not to be trifled with. In the fall of 1736 he swore that he would effectually rid himself of "the old scoundrel," who thereupon in all haste fled to Yakutsk, where he arrived after a nine days' ride, and filled the town with his prattling falsehoods, to which, however, only the Academists seem to have paid any attention.

Under circumstances where the local authorities did everything in their power to hinder the development of a district, it is only natural that in the settlement of Okhotsk and the construction of the ships for the expedition but slow progress was made. The enormous stores which were necessary for six or eight sea-going ships—provisions, cannon, powder, cables, hemp, canvas, etc., it would take two or three years to bring from Yakutsk, a distance both long and tedious, and fraught with danger. The work, the superhuman efforts, the forethought, and perseverance that Bering and his men exhibited on these transporting expeditions on the rivers of East Siberia have never been described or understood, and yet they perhaps form the climax in the events of this expedition, every page of the history of which tells of suffering and thankless toil.

In the middle of the 17th century, those Cossacks that conquered the Amoor country had opened this river navigation, and now Bering re-opened it. The stores were transported down the Lena, up the Aldan, Maya, and Yudoma rivers, thence across the Stanovoi Mountains, down the Urak, and by sea to Okhotsk. These transportations at first employed five hundred soldiers and exiles, and later more than a thousand. The season is very short. The rivers break up in the early part of May, when the spring floods, full of 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 new 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 Cossack expedition a cross had stood, Bering made an intermediate station for the expedition. Here were the dwellings of two officers, a barrack, two earth-huts, six warehouses, and a few other buildings and winter-huts. In these warehouses the goods were stored, to be conveyed, in the following winter, on horseback across the Stanovoi Mountains to the mountain stream Urak, which, after a course of two hundred versts, reaches the sea three miles south of Okhotsk.

For this part of the expedition, new winter-huts on the Stanovoi Mountains, and magazines, river boats, and piers on the Urak had to be built. This river is navigable only for a few days after the spring thaw. Then it boils along at the rate of six miles an hour, often making a trip down its course a dangerous one. Losseff says that in this way, other things being favorable, Okhotsk was reached in three years. The brief account which has here been attempted gives but a faint idea of the labor, perseverance, and endurance requisite to make one of these expeditions. Barges and boats had to be built at three different places, roads had to be made along rivers, over mountains, and through forests, and piers, bridges, storehouses, winter-huts and dwellings had to be constructed at these various places. Not only this. They suffered many misfortunes. Boats and barges were lost, men and beasts of burden were drowned, deserted, or were torn to pieces by wolves,—and all these difficulties Bering and his assistants overcame through their own activity, without the support of the Siberian government, yes, in spite of its ill will, both concealed and manifest. In 1737, he reported to the Admiralty: "Prior to our arrival at Yakutsk not a pood[55] of provisions had been brought to Okhotsk for us, nor had a single boat been built for the transportation. Nor did we find workmen or magazines at the landing places on the Maya and Yudoma rivers. The Siberian authorities have not taken a single step toward complying with the ukases issued by Her Royal Highness." And with justifiable self-esteem he adds: "We did all this. We built transports, we obtained workmen in Yakutsk, we conveyed our provisions to Yudomskaya Krest, and with superhuman efforts thence to the sea. At the mouths of the Maya and Yudoma, at the Cross, and at the Urak we erected storehouses and dwellings, in the Stanovoi Mountains several winter-huts, and on the Urak no less than seventy river boats, which have, in part, started for Okhotsk with provisions. Not until after the lapse of two years have I been able to induce the authorities in Yakutsk to appoint superintendents of transportation, and for this reason it was entirely impossible for me to depart for Okhotsk, unless I wanted to see the work of the whole expedition come to a complete standstill, bring upon my men the direst need, and force the whole enterprise into most ignominious ruin."

FOOTNOTES:

[53] Note 7.

[54] Note 42.

[55] A pood is thirty-six pounds.

[CHAPTER X.]
DELAY OF THE EXPEDITION CAUSED BY THE DEATH OF LASSENIUS AND HIS COMMAND IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.—DISSATISFACTION OF THE SENATE AND ADMIRALTY WITH BERING'S WORK.

The difficulties recounted in the preceding chapter are alone sufficient to justify Bering's nearly three years' stay in Yakutsk; but simultaneously many other duties demanded his attention. It does not come within the scope of this treatise to describe the investigations of the Academical branch of this enterprise,—to portray Müller's and Gmelin's services to botany, history, and geography; they are of interest here only in their relation to Bering. Especially in Yakutsk did those men give him much to attend to. It devolved upon him now to convey those gentlemen, in a manner fitting their station, up or down the Lena, now to send La Croyère to Lake Baikal or to the Arctic Ocean,—all of which was to be done in a country principally inhabited by nomadic tribes, with only here and there a Russian population where there were government officials, and with no other means of transportation than those secured for the occasion. In Yakutsk, where the Professors stayed a long time, their relations with Bering were very much strained, principally, it would seem, on account of their exorbitant demands for convenience and luxury. Since Bering would not and could not take upon himself to transport them to Kamchatka as comfortably as he had thus far conveyed them, especially not from Okhotsk, in private and conveniently equipped vessels, and since the Voivode likewise gave them but little hope of support, both Gmelin and Müller made application for a release from the expedition, and left to Krasheninnikoff and Steller their principal task—the description of Kamchatka.

In the year 1736, moreover, very discouraging news was received from the Arctic seas. Pronchisheff had been obliged to go into winter quarters at Olenek, and Lassenius, who, August 2, had reached the rocky islet Stolb, in the Lena delta, and on the 7th stood out of the mouth of the Bykoff eastward, was driven by storm and ice into the river Khariulakh, east of the Borkhaya Bay, where he wintered, in a latitude of 71° 28'. The place was uninhabited, and he built from driftwood a winter-house 66 feet long, making four apartments, with three fireplaces, and a separate kitchen and bath-room. As Lassenius hoped to be able to continue the expedition during the two succeeding summers, the rations were made considerably smaller.

November 6, the polar night began, and shortly afterwards nearly the whole crew were attacked by a deadly scurvy, so violent that perhaps only Jens Munk[56] and his fellow-sufferers on the Churchill River have experienced anything worse. On the 19th of December Lassenius died, and in the few succeeding months nearly all of his officers and thirty-one of the crew, so that when assistance from Bering arrived, only eight men were alive. Müller and Gmelin say that the crew accused Lassenius of high treason, and mutinied; but there is no documentary evidence of this. The report seems to have arisen through a confounding of the name of Lassenius with that of the deputy constable Rosselius, who, on the 18th of November, 1735, was sent, under arrest, to Yakutsk. To fill the vacancies caused by this terrible disease, Bering had to send a whole new command—Lieut. Dmitri Laptjef, the second mate Plauting, and forty-three men—to Khariulakh to continue the expedition. In addition to this, two boats with provisions were sent to the mouth of the Lena, and in 1737, before he himself departed for Okhotsk, a shipload of provisions was sent to supply the magazines on the Arctic coast. To these various tasks Bering gave his personal attention.

In 1736-38 this great enterprise passed through a dangerous crisis. Several years had elapsed since the departure from St. Petersburg, three hundred thousand rubles (over two hundred thousand dollars) had been expended—an enormous sum at that time—and yet Bering could not point to a single result. Lassenius was dead, his successor, D. Laptjef, had been unfortunate, Pronchisheff had, in two summers of cruising, not been able to double the Taimyr peninsula, Ofzyn was struggling in vain in the Gulf of Obi, while Bering and Spangberg had not begun their Pacific expeditions. The former had not even reached the coast. The government authorities at St. Petersburg were in the highest degree dissatisfied with this seeming dilatoriness. The Senate sent a most earnest appeal to the Admiralty to recall the expedition. Here was a situation that Bering's enemies thought favorable for their intrigues. The departments of the Admiralty were deluged with complaints and accusations. The Siberian authorities, of whom Bering so justly had complained, answered with counter-charges. He was not familiar with the country, they said; he made unreasonable demands, and did not know how to avail himself of means at hand. Pissarjeff told the government that Bering and Spangberg had undertaken this expedition into Siberia simply to fill their own pockets,—that they accepted bribes, carried on a contraband liquor traffic, and had already accumulated great wealth. The exiled naval officer, Kasanssoff, reported that there was entire lack of system in the enterprise; that everything was done at an enormous expenditure, and that nothing at all would be accomplished. Lieutenant Plauting, one of Bering's own officers, who had been reduced for neglect of duty, accused Bering of being arbitrary, extravagant, and fond of show at the expense of the government. He accused him, furthermore, of embezzlement on his first expedition, in 1725, and alleged that Bering's wife had returned to Russia with a fortune, and had in Yakutsk abducted two young women.[57]

History has not confirmed a single one of these charges. As for sacrifice, disinterestedness, and zeal, Bering not only rises far above his surroundings—which is, perhaps, not saying very much—but his character is clean and unsullied. Even so petty a person as Sokoloff, who, in other respects, does not spare him, has for his character unqualified praise. Nevertheless, all of these complaints and accusations caused Bering much trouble and vexation. The Admiralty, hard pressed by the Senate, found it difficult to furnish the necessary means for the continuation of the expedition, and treated Bering severely and unreasonably. It lacked the view which personal examination gives. It was beset with deceitfulness and circumvention, and its experiences led it to take the worst for granted. Hence, it sent Bering one message after the other reprehensive of his course. It threatened to fine him, to court-martial him, to reduce him, and, in 1737, it even went so far as to deprive him of his supplemental salary, which was withheld several years.[58] Bering defended himself with the bitterness of despair. In his reports he gave the most solemn assurances of his perseverance and fidelity to duty, and the most detailed accounts of all difficulties. He declared upon his honor that he was unable to see any other means or resources than those he had resorted to. He even appealed at last to the testimony of the chiefs of the various expeditions and all the subordinate officers. He was not believed. The Admiralty showed its lack of tact by letting Chirikoff investigate a series of charges against him. Furthermore, in spite of Bering's most urgent representations, Pissarjeff continued to retain his position in Okhotsk; and, although the government threatened the Siberian authorities with the sternest punishments, still the latter only very inactively participated in the work of the expedition.

Sokoloff gives a very repulsive picture of Bering's assistants. On account of the discomforts of the journey in this barbaric country, and under the pressure of ceaseless toil, a large number of the subordinates fell to drinking and committing petty thefts; and the officers, gathered as they were from all quarters of the world, are described as a band of gruff and unruly brawlers. They were always at sword's points. Pronchisheff and Lassenius, Chirikoff and Spangberg, the latter and Walton, Plauting, Waxel, Petroff and Endoguroff, were constantly wrangling, and at times most shameful scenes were enacted. Our Russian author is not adverse to giving Bering the principal blame for these dissensions which cast a gloom on this worthy undertaking and impaired the forces of the expedition. He repeatedly, and with much force, accuses him of being weak, and in the Imperial Marine this opinion seems yet to prevail.[59] Sokoloff says: "Bering was a well-informed man, eager for knowledge, pious, kind-hearted, and honest, but altogether too cautious and indecisive; zealous, persevering, and yet not sufficiently energetic; well liked by his subordinates, yet without sufficient influence over them,—too much inclined to allow himself to be affected by their opinions and desires, and not able to maintain strict discipline. Hence, he was not particularly well qualified to lead this great enterprise, especially in such a dark century and in such a barbaric country as East Siberia." I do not doubt that we here find some of the elements of Bering's character, but Sokoloff was much more of an archivist than historian and student of human nature. In his long accounts he never succeeds, by means of describing any action or situation, in giving a psychological insight into Bering's character, and, as matters now stand, it is impossible to draw any tenable line between the errors and delays that were necessarily attendant upon such an over-burdened enterprise, and those that were due to the possible inefficiency of the leader. By the authority of the Senate the expedition was not a monarchical unit under Bering, but a democratic association under an administrative chief. It is not difficult to collect from the literature of that day a series of expressions which accuse Bering of cruelty, imperiousness, and military arrogance. Of a hundred leaders in Bering's position ninety-nine would undoubtedly have thought it wise to leave the whole expedition. Steller has with far more delicacy and skill drawn the main lines of his mental physiognomy. "Bering was," he says, "a true and honest Christian, noble, kind, and unassuming in conduct, universally loved by his subordinates, high as well as low. Every reasonable person must admit that he always sought to perform the work entrusted to him to the best of his ability, although he himself confessed and often regretted that his strength was no longer sufficient for so difficult an expedition. He deplored the fact that the plans for the expedition had been made on a much larger and more extensive scale than he had proposed, and he expressed a desire that, on account of his age, he might be released from this duty and have the task assigned to some young and active Russian. As is well known, he was not naturally a man of quick resolve, but when one considers his fidelity to duty, his cheerful spirit of perseverance and careful deliberation, it is a question whether another, possessed of more fire and ardor, could have overcome the innumerable difficulties of the expedition without having completely ruined those distant regions; for even Bering, far removed from all selfishness, was scarcely able in this regard to keep his men in check. The only fault of which the brave man can be accused, is that his too great leniency was as detrimental as the spirited and oftentimes inconsiderate conduct of his subordinates." It is undoubtedly true that Bering was not fully equal to the task; but no one would have been equal to this task. It is possible that his humane conduct impaired the work of the expedition, but this allegation still lacks proof, and Sokoloff, who wrote his book as a vindication of Chirikoff against Von Baer's sympathetic view of Bering, must be read with this reservation. It is downright absurd to hold the leader responsible for the moral weaknesses of his officers, for he had not chosen them, and was as dependent upon them as they upon him. "It seems to me," says Von Baer, "that Bering has everywhere acted with the greatest circumspection and energy, and also with the greatest forbearance. The whole expedition was planned on such a monstrous scale that under many another chief it would have foundered without having accomplished any results whatever."

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Munk was sent out by the Danish government in 1619 to search for a Northwest passage.—Tr.

[57] Note 43.

[58] Note 44.

[59] Note 45.

[CHAPTER XI.]
FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE PACIFIC EXPEDITIONS.

In the summer of 1737, Bering changed his headquarters to Okhotsk, and in the course of the autumn and winter, the greater part of his force was transferred to the same place or distributed among the various intermediate stations on the Yudoma, Maya, and Urak. Spangberg and Bering built Okhotsk. At the junction of the Okhota and the Kukhta, on one of the narrow deltas, the so-called Kushka, they erected a church for the expedition, a number of houses for the officers, barracks, magazines, a large dock-yard, and other buildings. The old stockaded fort, four miles farther up in the country, was deserted. Around the military center of the expedition the town gradually formed and rapidly grew to become the Russian metropolis on the Pacific. It cost very great exertions to make the place inhabitable. The site was a long sand-bank deposit, threatened by inundations. The climate was very unhealthy,—a cold, raw fog almost continually hung over this region. The party was pestered with fevers, and in this swamp it was that Bering lost his health. "The place is new and desolate," he writes. "We have sand and pebbles, no vegetation whatever, and no timber in the vicinity. Firewood must be obtained at a distance of four to five miles, drinking water one to two miles, while timber and joints for ship-building must be floated down the river twenty-five miles." But as a place for a dock-yard, as a harbor and haven of refuge for large ships, the location had such great advantages that these difficulties had to be overcome.

Spangberg's work had made the place. His men had worked clay, made tiles, and built houses, and when Bering arrived the ships Archangel Michael and Hope lay fully equipped in the harbor. Bering's old ships Fortuna and Gabriel had been repaired, and Spangberg lacked only an adequate supply of provisions to begin his expedition to Japan in the autumn of 1737.

But the provision transports, as usual, moved on very slowly and with great difficulty. In Okhotsk Spangberg's men were constantly in distress. They received only the rations of flour and rice authorized by law, and at long intervals some beef which Bering had bought in Yakutsk. On account of this scarcity of provisions Spangberg was obliged partially to stop work on the vessels. A part of his force was permitted to go a-fishing, a part were sent to the magazines in the country for their maintenance, while others were detached to assist in the work of transportation; hence it was with only a small force that he could continue work on the ships for the American voyage, the packet-boats St. Peter and St. Paul.

Sokoloff says: "Bering stayed three years in Okhotsk, exerting himself to the utmost in equipping expeditions, enduring continual vexations from the Siberian government—especially on account of Pissarjeff—and conducting frequent examinations and investigations into the quarrels and complaints of his subordinates. During all this time he was sternly and unreasonably treated by the Admiralty, which showered upon him threats and reproaches for slowness sluggishness, and disorder, for false reports and ill-timed accounts." Even as late as 1740 the Senate made a proposition to discontinue the expedition, and only by calling attention to the enormous expenditures already made, which would in that case be completely wasted, was the Admiralty allowed to continue it. Bering was especially disheartened on account of Pissarjeff. The latter arrived at Okhotsk at the same time that Bering did, took up his abode in the old Ostrog (fort) and immediately began his malicious annoyances. His complaints and protests poured into headquarters at Okhotsk. "For a correspondence with him alone," writes Bering, "I might use three good secretaries. I find his foul-tongued criticism extremely offensive." He would capture Bering's men to give them a drubbing, while his own deserted him to join Bering, by whom they were kindly received. The new town and the Ostrog were two hostile camps. Finally Bering was compelled to make a sally to liberate his men. The intrepid Spangberg, entirely out of patience with Bering's leniency, said: "Why do you give yourself so much trouble about this old knave? Give me four men and the authority and I shall immediately put him under arrest."