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.
LIEUT. SCHWATKA'S INTRODUCTION vii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE xii
AUTHOR'S PREFACE xv
PART I.
BERING'S FIRST EXPEDITION.
CHAPTER I.
Russia and England in the work of Arctic exploration.--Vitus
Bering's rank as an explorer 3
CHAPTER II.
Bering's nativity.--Norwegians and Danes in the service of
Peter the Great.--Founding of the Russian navy 6
CHAPTER III.
Plans for Bering's First Expedition.--Peter the Great's desire to
know the extent of his empire.--The Northeast passage 12
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 19
CHAPTER V.
The building of the Gabriel.--The discovery of Bering Strait 29
CHAPTER VI.
The task assigned by Peter the Great accomplished.--History of
the cartography of East Siberia.--Captain Cook's defense of
Bering 35
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 50
PART II.
THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION.
CHAPTER VIII.
Bering's plans for a second expedition.--The greatest geographical
enterprise ever undertaken 61
CHAPTER IX.
The Great Northern Expedition on its way through Siberia.--Difficulties
and dangers encountered and overcome 77
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 91
CHAPTER XI.
Final Preparations for the Pacific expeditions 99
PART III.
THE VARIOUS EXPEDITIONS.
CHAPTER XII.
The Arctic expeditions.--The Northeast passage.--Severe criticisms
on Nordenskjöld 107
CHAPTER XIII.
The discovery of the Kurile Islands and Japan from the north 117
CHAPTER XIV.
Preparations for Bering's voyage of discovery to America.--Founding
of Petropavlovsk.--The brothers De l'Isle 127
CHAPTER XV.
The discovery of America from the east.--Steller induced to
join the expedition.--The separation of the St. Peter and
the St. Paul 135
CHAPTER XVI.
Bering's place of landing on the American coast.--Captain
Cook's uncertainty.--The question discussed and definitely
settled 143
CHAPTER XVII.
Explorations along the American coast.--Steller's censure of
Bering for undue haste.--Bering defended.--Dall, the
American writer, reprimanded.--The return voyage 150
CHAPTER XVIII.
The discovery of the Aleutian Islands.--Terrible hardships of
the voyage.--Steller's fault-finding.--Bering confined to his
cabin.--Deaths on board from exhaustion and disease.--Bering
Island discovered.--A narrow escape 164
CHAPTER XIX.
The stay on Bering Island.--Fauna of the island.--A rich field
for Steller.--His descriptions immortalize the expedition.--The
sea-cow.--Its extermination.--Nordenskjöld refuted.--Preparations
for wintering.--Sad death of Bering.--An
estimate of his work.--Chirikoff's return.--The crew of the
St. Peter leave the Island.--The Great Northern Expedition
discontinued.--Bering's reports buried in Russian
archives.--Bering honored by Cook 174
APPENDIX.
BERING'S REPORT TO THE ADMIRALTY FROM OKHOTSK 195
NOTES 202
INDEX 217
MAPS.
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 manoeuvers 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 + 8-3/4 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."
Finally, in 1738, Spangberg found it possible to depart for Japan, and
in two summer expeditions he charted the Kurile Islands, Yezo, and a
part of the eastern coast of Nipon (Hondo), whereupon the cartography
of this part of the globe assumed an entirely new appearance.
The expeditions to Japan, which employed four ships and several hundred
men, had exhausted the provisions in Okhotsk. It was again necessary
to raise large supplies in West Siberia. A demand was made upon the
government office in Tobolsk for 40,000 rubles. From the district of
Verkhoiansk 50,000 poods of provisions, while in part from West Siberia
and in part from the Admiralty 20,000 yards of cloth were received.
From other very distant places oil, hemp, and other necessaries were
obtained. The Admiralty despatched to Irkutsk and Yakutsk two naval
officers, Lieutenants Tolbukhin and Larionoff, to superintend the
transportation of these goods. The number of laborers was increased to
a thousand, the roads were improved, more attendants were provided, the
Siberian authorities exhibited more energy than before, new river-boats
were constructed, and pack-horses were collected from a large radius
of country; by these increased means it was possible to collect all
necessaries in Okhotsk by 1740. In the month of June the ships for the
American expedition, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, were launched.
They were two-masters, 80 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 9-1/2 feet deep,
rigged as brigs, each of 108 tons burden, carrying 14 two and three
pound guns.
In the harbor and on the Sea of Okhotsk there was now quite a
respectable fleet of eight or nine ships, all built by Bering. The
Arctic coasts had been charted through his efforts. Spangberg had with
great success completed his task, and had been sent by Bering to St.
Petersburg to render a report. Bering's own force, which consisted
of 166 men, besides 80 engaged in transporting, was now collected in
Okhotsk. The astronomical department under La Croyère and the scientist
Steller also arrived, and finally Bering had the satisfaction of seeing
his worst enemy removed. In August, 1740, Pissarjeff was discharged,
and poor Antoni Devier, first a cabin boy, then successively
aid-de-camp, general, and chief of police in St. Petersburg--one of
Peter the Great's most trusted companions in arms, but banished through
the hatred of Menshikoff--became his successor as harbor-master in
Okhotsk.[60]
In the middle of August the packet-boats, the galley Okhotsk, and
a double sloop containing the scientists were ready to sail for
Kamchatka. Then Spangberg quite unexpectedly arrived. On his way home
he had received a counter order. The authorities in St. Petersburg
commanded him to repeat the expedition to Japan. This gave Bering
some extra work in the way of letters and orders, so that the vessels
under Bering's and Chirikoff's commands did not leave port until
the 8th of September. They were supplied with provisions for twenty
months, and their temporary destination was Avacha Bay on the east
coast of Kamchatka, where they were to pass the winter. All the great
enterprises which the government had instructed Bering to undertake
had now been begun. In the following chapters will be found a succinct
account of the results of each.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Note 46.
PART III.
THE VARIOUS EXPEDITIONS.