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The name Serdze Kamen appears for the first time—
historically speaking—in Gerhard Fr. Müller’s Sammlung
Russischer Geschichte, Vol. III., 1758.[1] He says:
“Bering finally, in a latitude of 67° 18′, reached a
headland whence the coast recedes to the west. From this the
captain drew the very plausible conclusion that he now
had reached the most northeasterly point of Asia. But
here we are forced to admit that the circumstance upon
which the captain based his conclusion was false, as it has
since been learned that the above-mentioned headland
was identical with the one called Serdze Kamen by the
inhabitants of Fort Anadyr, on account of the
promontory being heart-shaped.” Even this looks suspicious.
The account of some ignorant Cossacks is presented as a
corrective to the report of educated navigators, and it is
also indicated that the garrison at Fort Anadyr had exact
knowledge of the northern coast of the Chukchee
peninsula, something it did not have at all.[2]
But in order to understand Müller, it is necessary to
make a slight digression. When Bering, in the summer of
1729, was on his return to St. Petersburg, he met, between
Okhotsk and Yakutsk, the Cossack chief Shestakoff, who
by the aid of Bering’s ships intended to undertake an
extensive military expedition in the eastern seas. He
soon fell, however, in an engagement, but his comrade
Captain Pavlutski led an invasion into the land of the
Chukchees. From Fort Anadyr he went northward to
the Arctic Ocean, thence along the coast toward the east,
then across the Chukchee peninsula to the Pacific. A
more detailed account than this cannot be given, for his
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