draw
to St. Petersburg--the city of his own creation--leaders of thought
from every capital in Europe. And as his aim was to establish a navy,
he especially endeavored to attract foreign navigators to his kingdom.
Among these were many Norse and Danes. The acquaintance may have dated
from the apprenticeship on the docks of the East India Company; but at
any rate, among the foreign navigators was one Vitus Ivanovich Bering,
a Dane of humble origin from Horsens,[4] who had been an East India
Company sailor till he joined the Russian fleet as sub-lieutenant at
the age of twenty-two, and fought his way up in the Baltic service
through Peter's wars till in 1720 he was appointed captain of second
rank. To Vitus Bering, the Dane, Peter gave the commission for the
exploration of the waters between Asia and America. As a sailor,
Bering had, of course, been on the borders of the Pacific.[5]

{9} The scientists of every city in Europe were in a fret over the
mythical Straits of Anian, supposed to be between Asia and America, and
over the yet more mythical Gamaland, supposed to be visible on the way
to New Spain. To all this jangling of words without knowledge Peter
paid no heed. "You will go and obtain some reliable information," he
commands Bering. Neither did he pay any heed to the fact that the
ports of Kamchatka on the Pacific were six thousand miles by river and
mountain and tundra and desert through an unknown country from St.
Petersburg. It would take from three to five years to transport
material across two continents by caravan and flatboat and dog sled.
Tribute of food and fur would be required from Kurd and Tartar and wild
Siberian tribe. More than a thousand horses must be requisitioned for
the caravans; more than two thousand leathern sacks made for the flour.
Twenty or thirty boats must be constructed to raft down the inland
rivers. There were forests to be traversed for hundreds of miles,
where only the keenest vigilance could keep the wolf packs off the
heels of the travellers. And when the expedition should reach the
tundras of eastern Siberia, there was the double danger of the Chukchee
tribes on the north, hostile as the American Indians, and of the
Siberian exile population on the south, branded criminals, political
malcontents, banditti of {10} the wilderness, outcasts of nameless
crimes beyond the pale of law. It needed no prophet to foresee such
people would thwart, not help, the expedition. And