BEHRING FINDS HIS STRAIT
In the great work of Arctic exploration during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, it is to England and Russia that we owe our
knowledge at the present day. It is well known how Peter the Great
of Russia journeyed to Amsterdam to learn shipbuilding under the Dutch,
and to England to learn the same art under the English, and how the
Russian fleet grew in his reign. Among the Danish shipbuilders at
Petersburg was one Vitus Behring, already a bold and able commander
on the high seas.
The life of the great Russian Czar was drawing to its close--he was
already within a few weeks of the end--when he planned an expedition
under this same Vitus Behring, for which he wrote the instructions
with his own hands.
"(1) At Kamtchatka two decked boats are to be built. (2) 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. (3) 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, and after having
charted the coast return."
Were Asia and America joined together, or was there a strait between
the two? The question was yet undecided in 1725. Indeed, the east coast
of Asia was only known as far as the island of Yezo, while the Pacific
coast of America had been explored no farther than New Albion.
Peter the Great died on 28th January 1725. A week later Behring started
for Kamtchatka. Right across snow-covered Russia to the boundary of
Siberia he led his expedition. March found him at Tobolsk. With rafts
and boats they then made their way by the Siberian rivers till they
reached Yakutsk, where they spent their first winter. Not till the
middle Of June 1726 did Behring reach the capital of East Siberia.
The rest of the journey was through utterly unknown land. It was some
six hundred and eighty-five miles eastwards to Okhotsk through a rough
and mountainous country, cut up by deep and bridgeless streams; the
path lay over dangerous swamps and through dense forest.
The party now divided. Behring, with two hundred horses, travelled
triumphantly, if painfully, to Okhotsk in forty-five days. The town
consisted of eleven huts containing Russian families who lived by
fishing. Snow lay deep on the frozen ground, and the horses died one
by one for lack of food, but the undaunted explorer had soon got huts
ready for the winter, which was to be spent in felling trees and pushing
forward the building of his ship, the _Fortuna_, for the coming voyage
of discovery. Behring himself had made a successful journey to the
coast, but some of the party encountered terrible hardships, and it
was midsummer 1727 before they arrived, while others were overtaken
by winter in the very heart of Siberia and had to make their way for
the last three hundred miles on foot through snow in places six feet
deep. Their food was finished, famine became a companion to cold, and
they were obliged to gnaw their shoes and straps and leathern bags.
Indeed, they must have perished had they not stumbled on Behring's
route, where they found his dead horses. But at last all was ready
and the little ship _Fortuna_ was sailing bravely across the Sea of
Okhotsk some six hundred and fifty miles to the coast of Kamtchatka.
This she did in sixteen days. The country of Kamtchatka had now to
be crossed, and with boats and sledges this took the whole winter.
It was a laborious undertaking following the course of the Kamtchatka
River; the expedition had to camp in the snow, and few natives were
forthcoming for the transport of heavy goods.
It was not till March 1728 that Behring reached his goal, Ostrog, a
village near the sea, inhabited by a handful of Cossacks. From this
point, on the bleak shores of the Arctic sea, the exploring party were
ordered to start. It had taken over three years to reach this
starting-point, and even now a seemingly hopeless task lay before
them.
After hard months of shipbuilding, the stout little _Gabriel_ was
launched, her timber had been hauled to Ostrog by dogs, while the
rigging, cable, and anchors had been dragged nearly two thousand miles
through one of the most desolate regions of the earth. As to the food
on which the explorers lived: "Fish oil was their butter and dried
fish their beef and pork. Salt they were obliged to get from the sea."
Thus supplied with a year's provisions, Behring started on his voyage
of discovery along an unknown coast and over an unknown sea. On 13th
July 1728 the sails of the _Gabriel_ were triumphantly hoisted, and
Behring, with a crew of forty-four, started on the great voyage. His
course lay close along the coast northwards. The sea was alive with
whales, seals, sea-lions, and dolphins as the little party made their
way north, past the mouth of the Anadir River. The little _Gabriel_
was now in the strait between Asia and America, though Behring knew
it not. They had been at sea some three weeks, when eight men came
rowing towards them in a leathern boat. They were the Chukches--a
warlike race living on the north-east coast of Siberia, unsubdued and
fierce. They pointed out a small island in the north, which Behring
named the Isle of St. Lawrence in honour of the day. Then he turned
back. He felt he had accomplished his task and obeyed his orders.
Moreover, with adverse winds they might never return to Kamtchatka,
and to winter among the Chukches was to court disaster. After a cruise
of three months they reached their starting-point again. Had he only
known that the coast of America was but thirty-nine miles off, the
results of his voyage would have been greater. As it was, he ascertained
that "there really does exist a north-east passage, and that from the
Lena River it is possible, provided one is not prevented by Polar ice,
to sail to Kamtchatka and thence to Japan, China, and the East Indies."
The final discovery was left for Captain Cook. As he approached the
straits which he called after Behring, the sun broke suddenly through
the clouds, and the continents of Asia and America were visible at
a glance.
There was dissatisfaction in Russia with the result of Behring's
voyage, and though five years of untold hardship in the "extremest
corner of the world" had told on the Russian explorer, he was willing
and anxious to start off again. He proposed to make Kamtchatka again
his headquarters, to explore the western coast of America, and to chart
the long Arctic coast of Siberia--a colossal task indeed.
So the Great Northern Expedition was formed, with Behring in command,
accompanied by two well-known explorers to help, Spangberg and
Chirikoff, and with five hundred and seventy men under him. It would
take too long to follow the various expeditions that now left Russia
in five different directions to explore the unknown coasts of the Old
World. "The world has never witnessed a more heroic geographical
enterprise than these Arctic expeditions." Amid obstacles
indescribable the north line of Siberia, hitherto charted as a
straight line, was explored and surveyed. Never was greater courage
and endurance displayed. If the ships got frozen in, they were hauled
on shore, the men spent the long winter in miserable huts and started
off again with the spring, until the northern coast assumed shape and
form.
One branch of the Great Northern Expedition under Behring was composed
of professors to make a scientific investigation of Kamtchatka! These
thirty learned Russians were luxuriously equipped. They carried a
library with several hundred books, including _Robinson Crusoe_ and
_Gulliver's Travels_, seventy reams of writing-paper, and artists'
materials. They had nine wagonloads of instruments, carrying
telescopes fifteen feet long. A surgeon, two landscape painters, one
instrument maker, five surveyors accompanied them, and "the convoy
grew like an avalanche as it worked its way into Siberia." Behring
seems to have moved this "cumbersome machine" safely to Yakutsk,
though it took the best part of two years. Having left Russia in 1733,
it was 1741 when Behring himself was ready to start from the harbour
of Okhotsk for the coast of America with two ships and provisions for
some months. He was now nearly sixty, his health was undermined with
vexation and worry, and the climate of Okhotsk had nearly killed him.
On 18th July--just six weeks after the start--Behring discovered the
continent of North America. The coast was jagged, the land covered
with snow, mountains extended inland, and above all rose a peak
towering into the clouds--a peak higher than anything they knew in
Siberia or Kamtchatka, which Behring named Mount St. Elias, after the
patron saint of the day. He made his way with difficulty through the
string of islands that skirt the great peninsula of Alaska. Through
the months of August and September they cruised about the coast in
damp and foggy weather, which now gave way to violent storms, and
Behring's ship was driven along at the mercy of the wind. He himself
was ill, and the greater part of his crew were disabled by scurvy.
At last one day, in a high-running sea, the ship struck upon a rock
and they found themselves stranded on an unknown island off the coast
of Kamtchatka. Only two men were fit to land; they found a dead whale
on which they fed their sick. Later on sea-otters, blue and white foxes,
and sea-cows provided food, but the island was desolate and
solitary--not a human being was to be seen.
[Illustration: THE CHART OF BEHRING'S VOYAGE FROM KAMTCHATKA TO NORTH
AMERICA. From a chart drawn in 1741 by Lieut. Waxell, a member of
Behring's expedition. It is also interesting for the drawing of the
sea-cow, one of the very few authentic drawings of this curious animal,
which has long been extinct, and is only known by these drawings.]
Here, however, the little party was forced to winter. With difficulty
they built five underground huts on the sandy shore of the island now
known as Behring Island. And each day amid the raging snowstorms and
piercing winds one man went forth to hunt for animal food.
Man after man died, and by December, Behring's own condition had become
hopeless. Hunger and grief had added to his misery, and in his sand-hut
he died. He was almost buried alive, for the sand rolled down from
the pit in which he lay and covered his feet. He would not have it
removed, for it kept him warm. Thirty more of the little expedition
died during that bitter winter on the island; the survivors, some
forty-five persons, built a ship from the timbers of the wreck, and
in August 1742 they returned to Kamtchatka to tell the story of
Behring's discoveries and of Behring's death.