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