Vikings of the Pacific | Page 7

rigging, and provisions across two
continents. Spanberg and his men, winter-bound in East Siberia, were
reduced to eating their dog harness and shoe-straps for food before they
came to the trail of dead horses that marked Bering's path to the sea,
and guided them to the fort at Okhotsk.
Bering did exactly as Czar Peter had ordered. He built the two-deckers
at Kamchatka. Then he followed the coast northward past St. Lawrence
Island, which he named, to a point where the shore seemed to turn back
on itself northwestward at 67 degrees 18 minutes, which proved to
Bering that Asia and America were not {12} united.[8] And they had
found no "Gamaland," no new world wedged in between Asia and
America, Twice they were within only forty miles of America,
touching at St. Lawrence Island, but the fog hung like a blanket over
the sea as they passed through the waters now known as Bering Straits.
They saw no continent eastward; and Bering was compelled to return

with no knowledge but that Russia did not extend into America. And
yet, there were definite signs of land eastward of
Kamchatka--driftwood, seaweed, sea-birds. Before setting out for St.
Petersburg in 1729, he had again tried to sail eastward to the Gamaland
of the maps, but again foul weather had driven him back.
It was the old story of the savants and Christopher Columbus in an
earlier day. Bering's conclusions were different from the moonshine of
the schools. There was no "Gamaland" in the sea. There was in the
maps. The learned men of St. Petersburg ridiculed the Danish sailor.
The fog was supposed to have concealed "Gamaland." There was
nothing for Bering but to retire in ignominy or prove his conclusions.
He had arrived in St. Petersburg in March, 1730. He had induced the
court to undertake a second expedition by April of the same year.[9]
{13} And for this second expedition, the court, the senate the admiralty,
and the academy of sciences decided to provide with a lavish profusion
that would dazzle the world with the brilliancy of Russian exploits.
Russia was in the mood to do things. The young savants who thronged
her capital were heady with visionary theories that were to astonish the
rest of mortals. Scientists, artisans, physicians, monks, Cossacks,
historians, made up the motley roll of conflicting influences under
Bering's command; but because Bering was a Dane, this command was
not supreme. He must convene a council of the Russian officers under
him, submit all his plans to their vote, then abide by their decision. Yet
he alone must carry responsibility for blunders. And as the days went
on, details of instructions rolling out from admiralty, senate, and
academy were like an avalanche gathering impetus to destruction from
its weight. He was to establish new industries in Siberia. He was to
chart the whole Arctic coast line of Asia. He was to Christianize the
natives. He was to provide the travelling academicians with luxurious
equipment, though some of them had forty wagon-loads of instruments
and carried a peripatetic library.
Early in 1733, the Second Expedition set out from St. Petersburg in
detachments to cross Siberia. There were Vitus Bering, the commander,
Chirikoff and Spanberg, his two seconds, eight lieutenants, sixteen

mates, twelve physicians, seven priests, carpenters, {14} bakers,
Cossacks, sailors,--in all, five hundred and eighty men.[10] Now, if it
was difficult to transport a handful of attendants across Siberia for the
first simple voyage, what was it to convoy this rabble composed of
self-important scientists bent on proving impossible theories, of
underling officers each of whom considered himself a czar, of wives
and children unused to such travel, of priests whose piety took the
extraordinary form of knouting subordinates to death, of Cossacks who
drank and gambled and brawled at every stopping place till half the
lieutenants in the company had crossed swords in duels, of workmen
who looked on the venture as a mad banishment, and only watched for
a chance to desert?
Scouts went scurrying ahead with orders for the Siberian Cossacks to
prepare wintering quarters for the on-coming host, and to levy tribute
on the inhabitants for provision; but in Siberia, as the Russians say,
"God is high in the Heaven, and the Czar is far away;" and the Siberian
governors raised not a finger to prepare for Bering.
Spanberg left St. Petersburg in February, 1733. Bering followed in
March; and all summer the long caravans of slow-moving pack
horses--as many as four thousand in a line--wound across the desert
wastes of West Siberia.
{15} Only the academists dallied in St. Petersburg, kissing Majesty's
hand farewell, basking in the sudden sunburst of short notoriety,
driving Bering almost mad by their exorbitant demands for luxuriously
appointed barges to carry them down the Volga. Winter was passed at