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expeditions, and it is only through a systematic development of
these means that western Europe has been enabled to
celebrate its most brilliant triumphs in the Arctic regions,
and to succeed in getting farther than did the navigators
of the seventeenth century. The history of Russian polar
explorations has a series of proud names, which lack only
the pen of a Sherard Osborn to shine by the side of
Franklin and McClure, and it redounds to the honor of
Denmark that one of the first and greatest of these men
was a Dane,—that the most brilliant chapter in the
history of Russian explorations is due to the initiative and
indefatigable energy of Vitus Bering. In the service of
Peter the Great he successfully doubled the northeastern
peninsula of Asia, and after his return he made a plan for
the exploration of the whole Northeast passage from the
White Sea to Japan. Although he succumbed in this
undertaking, he lived long enough to see his gigantic
plans approach realization.
Bering was buried on an island in the Pacific, amid the
scenes of his labors, under that sand-barrow which had
been his death-bed. For many generations only a plain
wooden cross marked his resting-place, and as for his
fame, it has been as humble and modest as his head-board.
His labors belonged to a strange people who had but little
sympathy for the man. His own countrymen, among
whom he might have found this sympathetic interest,
knew his work but very imperfectly. Not until after the
lapse of a century did he find a careful biographer, and
even within comparatively recent years the great scientist
Von Baer has found it necessary to defend him against
misunderstandings and petty attacks.
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