micians with luxurious equipment, though some of them had forty
wagon-loads of instruments and carried a peripatetic library.

Early in 1733, the Second Expedition set out from St. Petersburg in
detachments to cross Siberia. There were Vitus Bering, the commander,
Chirikoff and Spanberg, his two seconds, eight lieutenants, sixteen
mates, twelve physicians, seven priests, carpenters, {14} bakers,
Cossacks, sailors,--in all, five hundred and eighty men.[10] Now, if
it was difficult to transport a handful of attendants across Siberia
for the first simple voyage, what was it to convoy this rabble composed
of self-important scientists bent on proving impossible theories, of
underling officers each of whom considered himself a czar, of wives and
children unused to such travel, of priests whose piety took the
extraordinary form of knouting subordinates to death, of Cossacks who
drank and gambled and brawled at every stopping place till half the
lieutenants in the company had crossed swords in duels, of workmen who
looked on the venture as a mad banishment, and only watched for a
chance to desert?

Scouts went scurrying ahead with orders for the Siberian Cossacks to
prepare wintering quarters for the on-coming host, and to levy tribute
on the inhabitants for provision; but in Siberia, as the Russians say,
"_God is high in the Heaven, and the Czar is far away_;" and the
Siberian governors raised not a finger to prepare for Bering.

Spanberg left St. Petersburg in February, 1733. Bering followed in
March; and all summer the long caravans of slow-moving pack horses--as
many as four thousand in a line--wound across the desert wastes of West
Siberia.

{15} Only the academists dallied in St. Petersburg, kissing Majesty's
hand farewell, basking in the sudden sunburst of short notoriety,
driving Bering almost mad by their exorbitant demands for luxuriously
appointed barges to carry them down the Volga. Winter was passed at
Tobolsk; but May of 1734 witnessed a firing of cannon, a blaring of
trumpets, a clinking of merry glasses among merry gentlemen; for the
caravans were setting out once more to the swearing of the Cossacks,
the complaining of the scientists, the brawling of the underling
officers, the silent chagrin of the endlessly patient Bering. One can
easily believe that the God-speed from the Siberians was sincere; for
the local governors used the orders for tribute to enrich themselves;
and the country-side groaned und