when the shores of
Okhotsk were reached, a fort must be built to winter there. And a
vessel for inland seas must be constructed to cross to the Kamchatka
peninsula of the North Pacific. And the peninsula which sticks out
from Asia as Norway projects from Europe, must be crossed with
provisions--a distance of some two hundred miles by dog trains over
mountains higher than the American Rockies. And once on the shores of
the Pacific itself, another fort must be built on the east side of the
Kamchatka peninsula. And the two double-decker vessels must be
constructed to voyage over the sleepy swell of the North Pacific to
that mythical realm of mist like a blanket, and strange, unearthly
rumblings smoking up from the cold Arctic sea, with the red light of a
flame through the gray haze, and weird voices, as if the fog wraith
were luring seamen to destruction. These were mere details. Peter
took no heed of impossibles. Neither did Bering; for he was in the
prime of his honor, forty-four years of age. "You will go," commanded
the Czar, and Bering obeyed.

Barely had the spirit of Peter the Great passed from this life, in
1725, when Bering's forces were travelling in midwinter from St.
Petersburg to cross Siberia to the Pacific, on what is known as the
First Expedition.[6] {11} Three years it took him to go from the west
coast of Europe to the east coast of Asia, crossing from Okhotsk to
Kamchatka, whence he sailed on the 9th of July, 1728, with forty-four
men and three lieutenants for the Arctic seas.[7] This voyage is
unimportant, except as the kernel out of which grew the most famous
expedition on the Pacific coast. Martin Spanberg, another Danish
navigator, huge of frame, vehement, passionate, tyrannical out
dauntless, always followed by a giant hound ready to tear any one who
approached to pieces, and Alexei Chirikoff, an able Russian, were
seconds in command. They encountered all the difficulties to be
expected transporting ships, rigging, and provisions across two
continents. Spanberg and his men, winter-bound in East Siberia, were
reduced to eating their dog harness and shoe-straps for food before
they came to the trail of dead horses that marked Bering's path to the
sea, and guided them to the fort at Okhotsk.

Bering did exactly as Czar Peter had ordered. He built the two-deckers
at Kamchatka. Then he followed the coast northward past St. Lawrence
Island, which he named, to a point where the shore se