ent their first winter. Not till the
middle Of June 1726 did Behring reach the capital of East Siberia.
The rest of the journey was through utterly unknown land. It was some
six hundred and eighty-five miles eastwards to Okhotsk through a rough
and mountainous country, cut up by deep and bridgeless streams; the
path lay over dangerous swamps and through dense forest.

The party now divided. Behring, with two hundred horses, travelled
triumphantly, if painfully, to Okhotsk in forty-five days. The town
consisted of eleven huts containing Russian families who lived by
fishing. Snow lay deep on the frozen ground, and the horses died one
by one for lack of food, but the undaunted explorer had soon got huts
ready for the winter, which was to be spent in felling trees and pushing
forward the building of his ship, the _Fortuna_, for the coming voyage
of discovery. Behring himself had made a successful journey to the
coast, but some of the party encountered terrible hardships, and it
was midsummer 1727 before they arrived, while others were overtaken
by winter in the very heart of Siberia and had to make their way for
the last three hundred miles on foot through snow in places six feet
deep. Their food was finished, famine became a companion to cold, and
they were obliged to gnaw their shoes and straps and leathern bags.
Indeed, they must have perished had they not stumbled on Behring's
route, where they found his dead horses. But at last all was ready
and the little ship _Fortuna_ was sailing bravely across the Sea of
Okhotsk some six hundred and fifty miles to the coast of Kamtchatka.
This she did in sixteen days. The country of Kamtchatka had now to
be crossed, and with boats and sledges this took the whole winter.
It was a laborious undertaking following the course of the Kamtchatka
River; the expedition had to camp in the snow, and few natives were
forthcoming for the transport of heavy goods.

It was not till March 1728 that Behring reached his goal, Ostrog, a
village near the sea, inhabited by a handful of Cossacks. From this
point, on the bleak shores of the Arctic sea, the exploring party were
ordered to start. It had taken over three years to reach this
starting-point, and even now a seemingly hopeless task lay before
them.

After hard months of shipbuilding, the stout little _Gabriel_ was
launched, her timber had been hauled to Ostrog by dogs, while the
rigging, cable, and anchors had been dragged nearly two thousa