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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.
Kirilolf, 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
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