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.