Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter VIII.
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as it rolled along down through the Admiralty and
Academy, it assumed most startling dimensions. These
authorities aspired to nothing less than raising all human
knowledge one step higher. The Admiralty desired the
expedition to undertake the nautical charting of the Old
World from Archangel to Nipon—even to Mexico; and
the Academy could not be satisfied with anything less
than a scientific exploration of all northern Asia. As a
beginning, Joseph Nicolas De l’Isle, professor of
astronomy at the Academy, was instructed to give a graphic
account of the present state of knowledge of the North
Pacific, and in a memoir to give Bering instructions how
to find America from the East. The Senate also decreed
that the former’s brother, Louis, surnamed La Croyère,
an adventurer of somewhat questionable character, should
accompany the expedition as astronomer. Thus decree
after decree followed in rapid succession. On December
28, the Senate issued a lengthy ukase, which, in sixteen
paragraphs, outlined in extenso the nautico-geographical
explorations to be undertaken by the expedition.
Commodore Bering and Lieut. Chirikoff, guided by the
instructions of the Academy, were to sail to America with
two ships for the purpose of charting the American coast.
They were to be accompanied by La Croyère, who, with
the assistance of the surveyors Krassilnikoff and Popoff,
was to undertake a series of local observations through
Siberia, along several of the largest rivers of the country
and in its more important regions, across the Pacific, and
also along the coast of the New World. With three ships
Spangberg was to sail to the Kurile Islands, Japan, and
the still more southerly parts of Asia, while
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