Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter VII.
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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.[1] It was accordingly quite
the proper thing to consider Bering’s first expedition
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