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.