Vikings of the Pacific | Page 6

down . . . obtain reliable
information . . . then, having charted the coast, return." [3]
From the time that Peter the Great began to break down the Oriental
isolation of Russia from the rest of Europe, it was his policy to draw to
St. Petersburg--the city of his own creation--leaders of thought from
every capital in Europe. And as his aim was to establish a navy, he
especially endeavored to attract foreign navigators to his kingdom.
Among these were many Norse and Danes. The acquaintance may have
dated from the apprenticeship on the docks of the East India Company;
but at any rate, among the foreign navigators was one Vitus Ivanovich
Bering, a Dane of humble origin from Horsens,[4] who had been an
East India Company sailor till he joined the Russian fleet as
sub-lieutenant at the age of twenty-two, and fought his way up in the

Baltic service through Peter's wars till in 1720 he was appointed
captain of second rank. To Vitus Bering, the Dane, Peter gave the
commission for the exploration of the waters between Asia and
America. As a sailor, Bering had, of course, been on the borders of the
Pacific.[5]
{9} The scientists of every city in Europe were in a fret over the
mythical Straits of Anian, supposed to be between Asia and America,
and over the yet more mythical Gamaland, supposed to be visible on
the way to New Spain. To all this jangling of words without knowledge
Peter paid no heed. "You will go and obtain some reliable information,"
he commands Bering. Neither did he pay any heed to the fact that the
ports of Kamchatka on the Pacific were six thousand miles by river and
mountain and tundra and desert through an unknown country from St.
Petersburg. It would take from three to five years to transport material
across two continents by caravan and flatboat and dog sled. Tribute of
food and fur would be required from Kurd and Tartar and wild Siberian
tribe. More than a thousand horses must be requisitioned for the
caravans; more than two thousand leathern sacks made for the flour.
Twenty or thirty boats must be constructed to raft down the inland
rivers. There were forests to be traversed for hundreds of miles, where
only the keenest vigilance could keep the wolf packs off the heels of
the travellers. And when the expedition should reach the tundras of
eastern Siberia, there was the double danger of the Chukchee tribes on
the north, hostile as the American Indians, and of the Siberian exile
population on the south, branded criminals, political malcontents,
banditti of {10} the wilderness, outcasts of nameless crimes beyond the
pale of law. It needed no prophet to foresee such people would thwart,
not help, the expedition. And when the shores of Okhotsk were reached,
a fort must be built to winter there. And a vessel for inland seas must be
constructed to cross to the Kamchatka peninsula of the North Pacific.
And the peninsula which sticks out from Asia as Norway projects from
Europe, must be crossed with provisions--a distance of some two
hundred miles by dog trains over mountains higher than the American
Rockies. And once on the shores of the Pacific itself, another fort must
be built on the east side of the Kamchatka peninsula. And the two
double-decker vessels must be constructed to voyage over the sleepy

swell of the North Pacific to that mythical realm of mist like a blanket,
and strange, unearthly rumblings smoking up from the cold Arctic sea,
with the red light of a flame through the gray haze, and weird voices, as
if the fog wraith were luring seamen to destruction. These were mere
details. Peter took no heed of impossibles. Neither did Bering; for he
was in the prime of his honor, forty-four years of age. "You will go,"
commanded the Czar, and Bering obeyed.
Barely had the spirit of Peter the Great passed from this life, in 1725,
when Bering's forces were travelling in midwinter from St. Petersburg
to cross Siberia to the Pacific, on what is known as the First
Expedition.[6] {11} Three years it took him to go from the west coast
of Europe to the east coast of Asia, crossing from Okhotsk to
Kamchatka, whence he sailed on the 9th of July, 1728, with forty-four
men and three lieutenants for the Arctic seas.[7] This voyage is
unimportant, except as the kernel out of which grew the most famous
expedition on the Pacific coast. Martin Spanberg, another Danish
navigator, huge of frame, vehement, passionate, tyrannical out
dauntless, always followed by a giant hound ready to tear any one who
approached to pieces, and Alexei Chirikoff, an able Russian, were
seconds in command. They encountered all the difficulties to be
expected transporting ships,