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Were Asia and America connected, or was there a
strait between the two countries? Was there a
Northwest and a Northeast passage? It was these great and
interesting questions that were to be settled by Bering’s
first expedition. Peter himself had no faith in a strait.
He had, however, no means of knowing anything about
it, for at his death the east coast of Asia was known only
as far as the island of Yezo. The Pacific coast of America
had been explored and charted no farther than Cape
Blanco, 43° north latitude, while all of the northern
portion of the Pacific, its eastern and western coast-lines, its
northern termination, and its relation to the polar sea,
still awaited its discoverer.
The above-mentioned ukase shows that the Czar’s
inquisitive mind was dwelling on the possibility of being
able, through northeastern Asia, to open a way to the rich
European colonies in Central America. He knew neither
the enormous extent of the far East nor the vastness of
the ocean that separated it from the Spanish colonies.
Yet even at that time, various representatives of the great
empire living in northeastern Siberia had some knowledge
of the relative situation of the two continents and could
have given Bering’s expedition valuable directions.
Rumors of the proximity of the American continent to
the northeastern corner of Asia must very early have been
transmitted through Siberia, for the geographers of the
sixteenth century have the relative position of the two
continents approximately correct. Thus on the Barents
map of 1598, republished by J. J. Pontanus in 1611, a
large continent towers above northeastern Asia with
the superscription, “America Pars,” the two countries
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