Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter VIII.
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simultaneously the coast from Okhotsk to Uda, to Tugur, to the
mouth of the Amoor, and the coasts of the Shantar
Islands and Saghalin were to be charted.
Even these tasks exceeded all reasonable demands, and
not until several generations later did Cook, La Perouse,
and Vancouver succeed in accomplishing what the
Russian Senate in a few pen-strokes directed Bering to do.
And yet, not until the government touched the Arctic
side of this task, did it entirely lose sight of all reason.
Its instructions to Bering were, not only to chart the
coast of the Old World from the Dwina to the Pacific, to
explore harbors and estuaries along this coast, to describe
the country and study its natural resources, especially its
mineral wealth, but also to dispatch an expedition to the
Bear Islands, off the mouth of the Kolyma, and to see to
it that his earlier trip to the Chukchee peninsula was
repeated, besides sailing from there to America, as the
results of his former voyage “were unsatisfactory,”
reliable information concerning that country having been
received from the Cossack Melnikoff.
All these expeditions were to start out from the great
Siberian rivers,—from the Dwina to the Obi with two
vessels under the charge of the Admiralty; from the Obi
and Lena with three twenty-four-oared boats, two of
which were to meet between these two rivers, and the
third was to sail around Bering’s Peninsula (thus Reclus
calls the Chukchee peninsula), or, if America proved to
be connected with that country, it was to attempt to find
European colonies. The orders of the Senate were,
furthermore, to the effect that surveyors should be sent out
in advance for the preliminary charting of these
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