Bering had brought a party, together with supplies and material, over
the rough and difficult but long-traveled routes to Okhotsk. Wherever
he went he found settlements and roads such as they were. He
transported his material to Bolsheretsk and from there across the
peninsula to Lower Kamchatka settlement. It would have been much easier
and shorter to have doubled the peninsula and taken his stores by sea;
one of his party had already explored the straits near Cape Lopatka,
but there was the chance of disaster in this plan and, with his stores
on _terra firma_, Bering cannot be blamed for taking the land route;
especially as the difficulties would not inconvenience him personally.
He succeeded in getting his stores and shipwrights to the place
designated and there prepared himself for the voyage. In all this there
was difficulty and trouble enough of a certain kind. That it all was
surmounted with success is very creditable to Bering and his officers.
But to call it exceptionally heroic or extraordinary, is to forget the
hundreds of others who preceded Bering, without the strong arm of the
government at their backs, who made the trails he followed, who founded
the settlements at which he rested, who raised the dogs, the horses and
the cattle which were used or consumed by his party.
Whatever praise we may feel due to Bering and his companions, and it is
certainly no stinted allowance, the appreciation of their struggles
cannot fail to include with justice, the still more remarkable and
nearly forgotten pioneer labors of the undaunted Siberiaks, who paved
the way, not only for Bering's weary journey, but for the slow yet
never ceasing march of civilization.
After leaving port Bering traced the shores of Kamchatka and eastern
Siberia as far as East Cape. Thence he sailed in a northeasterly
direction. At 3 P.M., Aug. 14th, land was seen astern; the vessel
continued in the same direction until 3 P.M. the next afternoon,
having, at most, sailed about twenty-four hours out of sight of land
but in shallow water. Bering then concluded he had gone far enough to
show the separation of Asia from America, or any land to the eastward.
No doubt he was influenced by the testimony of the residents of
Kamchatka who knew the work which had been performed in this region by
Deshneff and others, and also by the fact that the native testimony all
pointed the same way. If he was convinced of the truth of this
testimony he would have been disposed to accept as conclusive evidence
which would not be so regarded by critics. All the evidence shows
Bering as faithful to the letter of his orders, honest, patient with
the ill-doing or insubordination of others, but perfectly satisfied
with the accomplishment of what he had been specifically directed to
perform, and with a tendency to limit the specifications to the
narrowest construction they would bear. He adventured nothing beyond.
In the arbitrary government under which he served, with the violent
competition between foreign officers in the Russian service for
promotion in rank and pay, who can criticise him for the prudence and
caution which kept him well within his instructions? I certainly do
not. But to say that he was a cautious, prudent and sagacious officer,
is a different thing from asserting he was a daring, adventurous and
heroic explorer. I have not been able to discover anything in his
career justifying the latter estimate of his character.
At all events in the present case it must in time have occurred to him,
or have been suggested by his officers or by the Kamchatkans after his
return that the mere sailing off shore in admittedly shallow water for
twenty-four hours, was not an absolutely conclusive proof that the
continents were separated. Here was a man with a new vessel, a full
crew, a year's provisions for all hands, who has come half around the
globe, taking three and a half years to do it, building ships and at no
end of labor of one sort and another; all this to get into the region
where there is a question to be answered; and when he gets there he
barely gives twenty-four hours to searching for that answer with a
month of the season still available for work; and then starts for home
without settling the question; with a right conclusion, it is true, but
not of his own discovery, and without securing definite proof to defy
critics.
Leaving out of account the continent within half a day's sail which he
fairly ran away from, ignorantly, where is there anything adventurous,
daring or heroic in such conduct?
It is evident that if Bering had sailed along the coast which the
Chukchis said extended to the westward, instead of going off shore,
away from it, he would have confirmed that part of their testimony, and
given high probability to the assumption of their correctness in the
rest.
As it was, he left the question in a state so unsettled as to be a
subject of debate for nearly half a century; even authorities so
friendly as Dr. Campbell assuming with great confidence that Bering's
conclusions as to the separation of the two continents were erroneous.
It was not until the voyages of Captain Cook and his associates were
given to the world in 1784 that the matter was settled beyond
controversy.
Even in regard to the details of his voyage it was only through Bergh's
publication of Chaplin's logbook of the voyage in 1823, that the public
were informed as to what Bering did, and it was only in 1847 that the
unmutilated, but still ambiguous Report of 1730 was accessible even in
Russian typography.
We find that all the authorities who published in the last century
copies of Bering's map and accounts of his expedition arrived at what
Lauridsen calls an "interesting misunderstanding."
This misunderstanding was that he had sailed along the Chukchi coast,
as above suggested, and that his farthest point was in latitude 67° 18'
on the coast of northeastern Siberia.
How was it possible that men of such exceptional intelligence as Du
Halde and D'Anville and Müller, and Hazius, and Euler and Campbell were
all so deceived?
The facts are as follows:
(1) The verbatim Report of the voyage, the logbook of the expedition,
Bering's chart in its entirety, were inaccessible to the public for
many years; the chart has never been fully engraved for publication.
(2) The fragments of the Report which were circulated in print were
ambiguous in their language or erroneously modified; while the
published reductions of the chart which got into print were misleading,
or even erroneous.
(3) Two conflicting versions of the manuscript chart were circulated
and appear to have been officially sent out. That which appears to be
the later of the two is in some details quite erroneous and at variance
with Bering's report as printed and with the facts derived from
Chaplin's logbook, these two constituting the only authentic original
information which has yet reached the public in printed form. But these
two sources of correct data about the expedition were not printed until
long after the charts had been widely circulated, while the extracts
from the Report which appeared in print, even under so friendly an
editor as Dr. Campbell were so modified as to support rather than
expose the original error. How this arose there may be something in the
Russian archives to explain, or, if not, the case seems insoluble.
Whatever conclusion one arrives at, it is difficult to acquit Bering of
all responsibility for the misconception, if, as Lauridsen claims, he
was responsible for the chart of Du Halde in the form it was engraved.
In his report he states that their northernmost latitude was 67° 18',
that "all along the seacoast to this place wind elevated mountains." On
turning to the Du Halde chart we find the range of mountains continued
along the Chukchi coast until it reaches the latitude of 67° 18' where
it stops. If Bering drew the chart so, it would have been deception,
but it is quite as probable that the editor modified the chart in
engraving it, to correspond to his understanding of Bering's ambiguity.
As this would present nothing questionable to the reader, in the
absence of the details omitted by Bering, it would have been nothing
surprising if Campbell's interpolation of a false longitude for Lower
Kamchatka, in his list of positions, might have been, not a
typographical error, but an attempt to make the position agree with
this erroneous assumption. If it was a pure accident, the coincidence
is extraordinary. Of course Bering never was on this coast but Du
Halde's map is so engraved as to lead directly to the false inference
that he had been.
Again Bering says in his Report that at his turning point the land no
longer extended to the north and that no projecting points could be
observed in any direction. Since he had deliberately sailed away from
the shores without attempting to follow their trend this observation
would be absurd unless we suppose it addressed to a reader who took it
for granted that the vessel was still skirting the coast. There is no
mention in his Report of the fact that he had sailed away from the
coast, nor of the still more important fact that the soundings showed
that the water was comparatively shallow and discolored. Of course in
the absence of direct proof of the separation of Asia and America this
last evidence would tend to indicate that Bering was only in a bay or
shallow arm of the sea and that he suppressed it shows, if not a want
of candor, at least an injudicious reticence.
The map for the day when it was made (in the earlier version) was a
good one, and is appropriately praised by Cook, who had a copy of
Campbell's Harris on his vessel when exploring in the same region fifty
years later.
In his report of the trip eastward from Kamchatka in 1729, Bering says
nothing about the weather being foggy or stormy, but merely asserts
that he sailed nearly 200 versts and saw no trace of land. He leaves it
to be inferred that he could have seen land if it had been there to
see, which if the weather was foggy was not true.
The impression which these facts leave upon the mind is that Bering did
certainly frame his language so as to convey the idea that his evidence
of the separation of the two continents and of the absence of land
eastward from Kamchatka was more conclusive than it was in reality.
That this was done to avoid criticism seems a natural inference. That
an examination of his list of positions would have shown the location
of the point whence he turned back to be to the eastward of the
easternmost of his reported land is true, but his list of positions was
not published with his report, does not agree with his maps, and when
published by Campbell was garbled, as I have shown.
That the truth, however, did get out and that criticism was not
successfully avoided, is a matter of history. There can be little doubt
that Bering's anxiety to undertake the second expedition, which
followed, was stimulated by a desire to set these criticisms (which
would naturally be magnified by his enemies) finally at rest.
It may be suggested that Bering's report was modified by the
authorities, though why they should make these particular modifications
is not very evident. Bering was the only person who could profit by
them and the natural conclusion is that he should be held responsible.
In pointing out that some of Bering's acts are vulnerable to criticism
I am far from desiring to sully his memory or give the idea that he was
not entitled to great praise for what he accomplished, much of which
was admirably done.
I wish merely to apply a gentle corrective to the exaggerated and
injurious flattery and undiscriminating praise which has been
injudiciously indulged in by his latest biographer.
If the interest in the subject be stimulated by discussion from these
opposing points of view, so as to result in the publication of some of
the material still hidden in the Russian archives I shall be more than
repaid for the time I have devoted to the question, even if the
publication of the original data should show some of my conclusions to
be ill founded or erroneous.
_Note_--The reception of the original work of Bergh while reading the
proofs of these pages has enabled me to correct several errors of
previous writers, but it was too late to incorporate here the
additional material which Bergh's work affords. This will enable me to
add, in a future publication, some historical data which have never
appeared in English and which are necessary to complete the record. I
desire in this place to express my gratitude for and appreciation of
the liberality of the authorities of that ancient seat of learning, the
University of Upsala, as exhibited in their willingness to send such a
valuable document to a foreign student half around the world for
purposes of historical research.