Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter VIII.
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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
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