Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter XIX.
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also served to show that the island belonged to the
Russian crown. This cross was renewed several times,
and in the sixties, so far as is known, twenty-four men
erected a monument to his honor in the governor’s garden
(the old churchyard) in Petropavlovsk, where a
monument to the unfortunate La Pérouse is also found, and
where Cook’s successor, Captain Clerke, found his last
resting place.
With Bering that mental power, which had been the
life of these great geographical expeditions and driven
them forward toward their goal, was gone. We have seen
how his plans were conceived; how through long and
dreary years he struggled in Siberia to combine and
execute plans and purposes which only under the greatest
difficulties could be combined and executed; how by his
quiet and persistent activity he endeavored to bridge the
chasm between means and measures, between ability to
do and a will to do,—a condition typical of the Russian
society of that time. We have seen how he surmounted
the obstacles presented by a far-off and unwilling
government, a severe climate, poor assistants, and an
inexperienced force of men. We have accompanied him on his
last expedition, which seems like the closing scene of a
tragedy, and like this ends with the death of the hero.
He was torn away in the midst of his activity.
Through his enterprise a great continent was scientifically
explored, a vast Arctic coast, the longest in the world,
was charted, a new route to the western world was found,
and the way paved for Russian civilization beyond the
Pacific, while enormous sources of wealth—a Siberian
Eldorado—were opened on the Aleutian Islands for the
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