er a heavy burden of extortion. The
second winter was passed at Yakutsk, where the ships that were to chart
the Arctic coast of Siberia were built and launched with crews of some
hundred men.

It was the end of June, 1735, before the main forces were under way
again for the Pacific. From Yakutsk to Okhotsk on the Pacific, the
course was down the Lena, up the Aldan River, up the Maya, up the
Yudoma, across the Stanovoi Mountains, down the Urak river to the sea.
A thousand Siberian exiles were compelled to convoy these boats.[11]
Not a roof had been prepared to house the forces in the mountains. Men
and horses were torn to pieces by the timber {16} wolves. Often, for
days at a time, the only rations were carcasses of dead horses, roots,
flour, and rice. Winter barracks had to be built between the rivers,
for the navigable season was short. In May the rivers broke up in
spring flood. Then, the course was against a boiling torrent. Thirty
men could not tug a boat up the Yudoma. They stood in ice-water up to
their waists lifting the barges over the turbulent places. Sores broke
out on the feet of horses and men. Three years it took to transport
all the supplies and ships' rigging from the Lena to the Pacific, with
wintering barracks constructed at each stopping place.

At Okhotsk on the Pacific, Major-General Pissarjeff was harbor master.
This old reprobate, once a favorite of Peter the Great, had been
knouted, branded and exiled for conspiracy, forbidden even to conceal
his brand; and now, he let loose all his seventy years of bitterness on
Bering. He not only had _not_ made preparation to house the explorers;
but he refused to permit them inside the stockades of the miserable
huts at Okhotsk, which he called his fort. When they built a fort of
their own outside, he set himself to tantalize the two Danes, Bering
and Spanberg, knouting their men, sending coureurs with false
accusations against Bering to St. Petersburg, actually countermanding
their orders for supplies from the Cossacks. Spanberg would have
finished the matter neatly with a sharp sword; but Bering forbore, and
Pissarjeff {17} was ultimately replaced by a better harbor master. The
men set to work cutting the timber for the ships that were to cross
from Okhotsk to the east shore of Kamchatka; for Bering's ships of the
first voyage could now be used only as packet boats.

Not till the fourth of June, 1741, had all preparations ripened for the