Native stories of the distant continent—The Russians in Kamchatka—Bering's expedition—The difficulties of his task—Builds a vessel and reaches Kamchatka—Builds another vessel and discovers the strait named after him by Captain Cook—His second expedition—Spangberg's voyage to Japan—Bering reaches the American coast—His shipwreck and death—The influence of the sea-otter and the fur-seal on geographical discovery—The Arctic voyage of Captain Cook—Clerke's voyage—Beechey's voyage—Point Barrow reached by the barge of the Blossom—Kellett's voyage in the Herald—Boat expedition to Hudson Bay—Kellett reaches 72° 51´—Landing on Herald Island—Kellett sights Wrangell Island—Berry in the Rodgers explores Wrangell Island—He reaches 73° 44´—Frederick Whymper and W. H. Dall ascend the Yukon.

Rumours of land over against the far corner of Siberia had reached the Russians for years, and many were the legends of those who had seen these lands from the cliffs, or had been on the ice to look at them more closely, or had gone away to them and never come back. There was, for instance, the old legend of Kraechoj, who believed he had found safe shelter at Irkaipii from the Chukche vengeance, but the Chukche made his way into the stronghold and killed Kraechoj's son, whereupon Kraechoj escaped by letting himself down with thongs to the boat and fled to the land whose mountains can be seen in clear sunshine from Cape Yakan; and there he was among his people who had left Asia before him.

And among the official documents was the statement made by the Chukches when they went to Anadyrskoi Ostrog to acknowledge the dominion of the Russians, that "The Noss is full of rocky mountains, and the low grounds consist of land covered with turf. Opposite to it lies an island, within sight of it, of no great extent, and void of wood. It is inhabited by people who have the same aspect as the Chukche, but are quite a different nation, and speak their own language, though they are not numerous. It is half a day's voyage with boats from the Noss to the island. There are no sables on the island, and no other animals but foxes, wolves, and reindeer. Beyond the island is a large continent that can be scarcely discerned from it, and that only on clear days; in calm weather one may row over the sea from the island to the continent, which is inhabited by a people who in every particular resemble the Chukches. There are large forests of fir, pine, larch, and cedar trees; great rivers flow through the country and fall into the sea. The inhabitants have dwellings and fortified places of abode environed with ramparts of earth; they live upon wild reindeer and fish; their clothes are made of sable, fox, and reindeer skins, for sables and foxes are there in great abundance. The number of men in that country may be twice or three times as many as that of the Chukches who are often at war with them." That there was land in sight somewhere seemed clear, but the reports differed in placing it all the way round from the north to the east. Many were the vain attempts to reach it from the northward-flowing rivers, and it was left to be found from the Pacific side.

When Atlassof, in 1697, took the first steps in the conquest of Kamchatka the Russians were already known to the inhabitants. Long before him Fedotof and a few comrades had made their way into the country and intermarried with native women. They had been held in great honour and almost deified as being evidently of a superior race. For some time it was supposed that no human hand could hurt them, but this belief was rudely shattered when two of the demigods quarrelled and fought, and one wounding the other, the blood flowed. That flow of blood was fatal, for the natives, judging that they were but ordinary flesh, took an early opportunity of wiping them out, the name of their leader being still traceable in that of the Fedotcha River on the banks of which they had lived.

The Kamchadales had other tales to tell of visitors from the east and south, and Atlassof himself discovered on the River Itcha a Japanese who had been wrecked on the coast two years before, from whom he learnt of islands innumerable. But there were no ships on the Pacific coast of Siberia, and nothing in the way of discovery could be done until 1714, when there arrived at Ochotsk a detachment of sailors and shipwrights despatched thither overland. According to one of the sailors, Henry Bush, a Dutchman, the carpenters built a good durable vessel some fifty feet long which was ready for sea in 1716 when the first voyage was undertaken. The coast of Kamchatka was made near the River Itcha, and sailing south they reached the Kompakova, where they wintered and found the whale that had in its body the harpoon of European workmanship marked with Roman letters, mentioned by Scoresby. Bush returned to Ochotsk in July, to be sent in the following year to discover the Shantar Islands, and next year, 1718, the Kuriles; thus venturing into the Pacific beyond Cape Lopatka.

The last of these expeditions was due to the direct order of Peter the Great, who, knowing nothing of Deschnef, and finding the sea open to the north, resolved on a voyage in that direction, his holograph instructions to Admiral Apraxin being: "One or two boats with decks to be built at Kamchatka, or at any other convenient place, with which inquiry should be made relative to the northerly coasts, to see whether they are not contiguous with America, since their termination is not yet known." Peter died, and the Empress Catherine, carrying out these instructions in their fullest meaning, began her reign with an order for the expedition.

Veit Bering, Dane by birth and sailor by trade, had voyaged to the Indies, east and west, and, like many other men of enterprise, had entered the Russian service at Peter's invitation. He had served with distinction in the Cronstadt fleet in the war against the Swedes, and, being in good repute for his knowledge of ships and their handling, was appointed to the command of the most remarkable Arctic enterprise on record. Just as Nicholas ruled a line and ordered a railway to be built there, so did Catherine in the same imperial way order an exploring expedition, and it was done. But it meant building the ship from the trees of the forest on the coast of the Pacific and carrying the materials and stores—everything but the timber—right across the Russian empire in the days when for thousands of miles there were not even roads.

Bering's lieutenants were Martin Spangberg and Alexei Tschirikof. With them and the rest of the expedition he left St. Petersburg on the 5th of February, 1725. During that year they got as far as the Ilim, where they wintered. In the spring of 1726 they sailed down the Lena to Yakutsk, where they parted company for a time owing to the difficulties of the route to Ochotsk, the way not being passable in summer with wagons, or in winter with sledges, on account of the marshes and rocky ground. So Spangberg set out, working along the rivers Aldan, Maia, and Judoma, with part of the provisions and heavy naval stores, while Bering followed overland through uninhabited country with more stores on horses, and Tschirikof remained to collect still more and follow in the track of his commander.

Bering reached Ochotsk first. Spangberg was frozen up in the Judoma, and thence he walked to Ochotsk with the most necessary materials; but he suffered so much from hunger on the way that he had to support life by eating leather bags, straps, and shoes, and did not reach Bering till the 1st of January, 1727, nearly two years after leaving St. Petersburg. In the beginning of February he returned to the Judoma and brought away about half of his lading, the other half being left for a third journey, which he made from and to Ochotsk on horses. Meanwhile Tschirikof was toiling along from Yakutsk, and did not arrive to complete the party until the 30th of July.

On arrival Bering had to build a vessel to take his most necessary naval stores and his shipbuilders across the sea of Ochotsk to Bolscheretzkoi, which, in her, he reached on the 2nd of September. From here he followed the shipwrights, who went on ahead to fell the trees, taking with them the provisions and stores, over the backbone of the isthmus and down the Kamchatka River to the mouth, a distance of some two hundred miles, the journey being very slow on account of the travelling being by dog-sledge. In short, it was not until the 4th of April, 1728, that is, more than three years after leaving St. Petersburg, that it was possible to put on the stocks the vessel in which the voyage to the north was to be made. But she took only three months to build, being launched on the 10th of July, when she was named the Gabriel.

Laden with stores for forty men during a year's voyage, she put to sea ten days afterwards, Bering keeping close to the coast so that he could map it as he went. On the 10th of August he was off the island of St. Lawrence, which he so named, as it was the day of that saint. In a day or two he had passed the East Cape without seeing the American coast, and had entered the Arctic Circle. And on the 15th he was well through the strait, out in the Arctic Ocean, in 67° 18´ off Serdze Kamen, a promontory behind which the coast trended to the west, as the Chukches had told him it did; and he assumed, and rightly so, though he had not gone far enough to prove it, that there was no land connection between Asia and America. Whereupon, as he had in his opinion accomplished his mission, seeing no need for wintering in those parts, he put the Gabriel about and was back in the Kamchatka River on the 20th of September, after a voyage of seven weeks in a vessel that took three months to build on a spot that took over three years to reach—the plan of campaign being much the same as that in which a mountain stronghold is advanced on across a desert, besieged for a few days, and captured by assault.

After wintering, Bering went off next year on a voyage due east in search of reported land, but, after some hundred and thirty miles out, he was blown back, and, rounding the south end of Kamchatka, put in at the River Bolschaia; thence he crossed to Ochotsk, whence he started for St. Petersburg, where he arrived after an absence of five years. Catherine was dead and another empress reigned in her stead, who was pleased and satisfied if no one else was, and the 21st of February, 1733, saw him starting again in the same laborious fashion to arrange other voyages as part of a great scheme for the exploration of Northern and North-eastern Asia. Some of these expeditions on the north coast have already been mentioned; Bering's particular task was to send Spangberg in search of Japan, while he and Tschirikof, in separate ships, went eastward to America. More stores and provisions went overland across Siberia than before; Spangberg got again frozen up on the Judoma and had to continue on foot to Ochotsk, where he found plenty of food owing to Bering having sent on ahead, in case of any such trouble, a hundred horses, each of them laden with meal. In June, 1738, Spangberg, in two newly-built vessels and the Gabriel, was off to Japan, to reach the Kuriles and return to winter in Kamchatka; but next year he arrived there all well and found to his astonishment that the Japanese knew as much about maps as he did. He was still more astonished on his return to be told by those high in office at St. Petersburg that he could not possibly have been there as they had not got it on their maps where he said it was, and, consequently, he was to go where he had been as soon as he could to make sure. He started on this voyage of verification, but circumstances were against him and he did not reach there; and his Japanese trip remained discredited until the Russian geographers knew better. His voyage thither had, however, used such a stock of provisions that it was two years before the deficiency could be made up, and it was actually the 4th of September, 1740, seven and a half years after leaving St. Petersburg, when Bering, in the specially-built St. Peter, and Tschirikof, in her sister the St. Paul, got off outward bound to America.

In about three weeks they were at Awatcha Bay on the east of Kamchatka, anchored in the fine harbour named Petropaulovsk after the two ships, and here they had to stay for the winter, so that they did not leave Russian territory until the 4th of the following June. A few days out the ships were separated in a fog and storm, and the St. Paul reached the American coast first, at Kruzof Island on the western shore of Sitka Sound. The St. Peter three days afterwards, on the 18th of July, drifted to the coast more to the northward, at Cape St. Elias near the mighty mountain of that name. In this neighbourhood amid much fog Bering stayed six weeks until he was blown out to sea, when, his men beginning to die from scurvy, he resolved to return to Kamchatka. It was a voyage of misfortune in a continual downfall, the men in want, misery, and sickness, continuously at work in the cold and wet, becoming fewer and fewer, so that there were not enough to work the ship properly. It ended on one of the Commander Islands by the vessel being lifted by the sea clear over a reef into calm water. Bering died—the island is named after him—and the survivors of the crew, building a boat from the materials of the St. Peter, arrived at Petropaulovsk on the 27th of August, bringing with them a quantity of sea-otter skins, which did more for discovery in those seas than any imperial expedition.

As the sable had brought about the conquest of Siberia, so did the sea-otter lead to the seizure of the islands of the Bering Sea and the coasts of Alaska. Three years after the return of the survivors of the St. Peter, Nevodtsikof wintered on one of the Aleutian Islands, and in a few years the fur-hunters were at their exterminating work over the whole chain. In time the fur-seal attracted as much attention, and, with Pribylov's discovery, in 1786, of its rookeries on the islands named after him, the trade became of such increasing importance as to endanger in our time the peace of the world. Every one has heard of the wonderful haunts and habits of that strange eared seal which seems to have come from the south through the tropics to breed in the coldest limit of its range, now almost entirely on the Pribylovs and the Commanders; how it is pursued in skin boats and every sort of craft, and scared in long lines to slaughter by clapping of boards and bones and waving of flags and opening and shutting of gingham umbrellas, until it promises to become as extinct as Steller's sea-cow or as rare as the sea-otter.

Following Bering on the way to the north came Captain James Cook, in H.M.S. Resolution, who gave Bering's name to the strait. Cook sighted Mount St. Elias in May, 1778, and, cruising slowly along the coast with many discoveries and much accurate surveying, was off, and named, Cape Prince of Wales, the western extremity of America, on the 9th of August. He then crossed the strait and plied back until on the 18th he sighted and named Icy Cape in 70° 29´. Close to the edge of the ice, which was as compact as a wall, and seemed to be ten or twelve feet high at the least, he sought persistently for a passage through, but none was to be found; and after reaching 70° 6´ in 196° 42´ (163° 18´ W.) on the 19th, he turned westward to the Asiatic coast, along which he went until he sighted and named Cape North, as already stated. Then, blocked by ice, east, north, and west, he returned, passing Cape Serdze Kamen (Bering's farthest) and naming East Cape, confirming Bering's observation that it was the most easterly point of Asia.

On Cook's death at Hawaii Captain Charles Clerke, of the accompanying vessel H.M.S. Discovery, took command of the expedition and carried out Cook's intention of making another effort during the following year. The ice conditions were, however, worse. The two ships found the ice block further south, and as impenetrable as before, and Clerke's highest was 70° 33´ on the American side, on the 19th of July. As it was Cook's last voyage, so it was Clerke's. He was in a bad way with consumption, and continued his work in the north, though, under the special circumstances and being in command, he could at any time have given up the obviously hopeless attempt and left for a more genial climate, in which he would at least have had a chance of longer life; but, remaining at his duty, he died at sea on the 22nd of August, and was buried at Petropaulovsk.

Captain Beechey, in H.M.S. Blossom, passed through the strait in 1826 when sent north from the Pacific with a view of meeting with his old commander, Franklin, then on his second land journey. Beechey took the ship to Icy Cape, whence on the 17th of August he despatched the barge under the master, Thomas Elson, to survey the coast to the north-eastward as far as he could go in three weeks, there and back. Elson reached his farthest on the 25th at a spit of land jutting out several miles from the more regular coast-line, the width of the neck not exceeding a mile and a half, broadest at its extremity, with several frozen lakes on it, and a village, whose natives proved so troublesome that it was thought unsafe to land. This was Point Barrow, in 71° 23´ 31?, longitude 156° 21´ 30?, the northernmost land on the western half of the American continent. To the eastward curved a wide bay—named Elson Bay by Beechey—the shore-line of which joined on to the ice pack that encircled the horizon. Here he was within a hundred and sixty miles of where Franklin had turned back a week before. Though Beechey did not meet Franklin he did most useful work in these parts, for by him the whole coast was surveyed between Point Barrow and Point Rodney, to the south of Prince of Wales Cape.

Franklin was also the cause of the appearance of the next British expedition in the strait. This was in 1848, Captain Henry Kellett, in H.M.S. Herald, with Commander Thomas Moore in H.M.S. Plover, forming the western detachment of the first series of search expeditions. There were three detachments, one to follow the Erebus and Terror from the eastward, another under John Richardson to descend the Mackenzie and search the northern coast, the other coming in from the west to meet the ships should they have made the passage. On this duty the Herald and Plover were hereabouts for three seasons, the Plover wintering, the Herald going south when the navigation closed.

In October, 1826, Beechey had buried a barrel of flour for Franklin on the sandy point of Chamisso Island, ample directions for finding it being cut and painted on the rock, and to call the attention of the party to the spot the name of the Blossom was painted on the cliffs of Puffin Island. When the Herald was at Chamisso Island in 1849 Captain Kellett searched for this flour and found it. A considerable space was cleared round the cask, its chimes were freed, and, only adhering to the sand by the two lower bilge staves, it required the united strength of two boats' crews, with a parbuckle and a large spar as a lever, to free it altogether. The sand was frozen so hard that it emitted sparks with every blow of the pickaxe. The cask itself was perfectly sound and the hoops good, and out of the 336 lb. of flour which it contained, 175 lb. were as sweet and well tasted as any he had with him; so good indeed was it that Captain Kellett gave a dinner party, at which all the pies and puddings were made of this flour.

After the dinner party, on the 18th of July, the two vessels started for the north, being joined as soon as they stood from the anchorage by Robert Shedden in his yacht the Nancy Dawson, who at his own initiative had come up from Hong Kong to join in the search. From Wainwright Inlet Kellett sent off the boats under Lieutenant Pullen, two of which made the journey along the northern coast and up the Mackenzie, their crews thence making their way home eastwards to York Factory.

When Kellett was about to commence his observations at the inlet he drew a semicircle on the sand from water's edge to water's edge, and placed the boats' noses between its points. The natives seemed to understand the meaning of this line. Not one of them attempted to overstep it, and they squatted down and remained perfectly quiet and silent. When a stranger arrived they shouted to him, and he no sooner comprehended the directions than he crept rather than walked to the boundary, and squatted among the rest. Afterwards they danced and sang and played football with the seamen—who stood no chance with them at that game—and when they had gone off, after all this good behaviour, it was discovered that they had been picking the pockets of some of the party, one losing a handkerchief, another a glove, and Commander Moore a box of percussion caps.

The boat party had a similar experience, without the pocket-picking. Reaching Point Barrow they landed to make observations and look about for traces of the visit of the Blossom's boat, which they did not find. Their interpreter did not understand the tribe, and recourse was had to the universal language of signs. "We made a rude model of a vessel," says Lieutenant Hooper, "and performed sundry antics to signify what we were in search of, but could elicit no information, and so set to work at obtaining observations. We concluded that these people must have been entirely misunderstood. Far from evidencing any disposition to assail or molest us, they were most docile and well-behaved, agreeably disappointing us in their conduct. When we arrived on the hillock, all, big and little, sat down around us, and I amused myself by filling their pipes, becoming a great favourite immediately in consequence. They had among them a great many knives, which we feared would influence the magnet. Mr. Pullen therefore kindly drew off the crowd to a distance, distributing among them tobacco, beads, snuff, etc., and much to their credit be it said, there was neither confusion nor contention, each taking his allotted portion, and seeming delighted with his good fortune. They took care not to come near the instruments, finding that we did not like their approach; one or two indeed came towards us, but retired instantly when laughingly motioned back, and this should be considered as a display of great forbearance, inasmuch as their curiosity must have been highly excited. When the observations were concluded they were allowed to inspect the objects of their wonder; then fast and thickly to utterance flew their expressions of astonishment at the—to them—novel and splendid instruments. The trough of quicksilver, liquid and restless, especially attracted them, pleasure and wonder were evident at the simple view, but when one or two had permission to take some from the dish, and found it ever elude the grasp, their astonishment knew no bounds."

From Wainwright Inlet, which is between Icy Cape and Point Barrow, the Herald sailed along the pack to the westward, reaching her highest north, 72° 51´, in 163° 48´, and, on the 17th of August, Kellett landed on and named Herald Island in 71° 17´ 45?, a mass of granite towering nine hundred feet above the sea, under five miles long and three broad, inhabited mainly by black and white divers and yielding the collector only four flowering plants. Further to the west he sighted Wrangell Island, sailed past and named by the American whaling captain, Thomas Long, in August, 1867.

In 1881 Wrangell Island was thoroughly explored by another search expedition, that of Captain Berry in the American ship Rodgers, who was in these parts looking out for traces of the Jeannette. He found it to be, not a continent as some had supposed, but an island forty miles broad and sixty-six miles long, about thirty miles from Herald Island and eighty from the Siberian coast; and on it, as on all these Siberian islands and the coast of Alaska, remains of the mammoth were found. Examining the ice to the northward, he reached 73° 44´ in 171° 30´, being fifty-three miles further north than Kellett and twenty-four miles further than Collinson in 1850. Returning from the north to winter quarters he achieved another Arctic record in his ship being destroyed by fire in St. Lawrence Bay on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait.

Opposite this, on the American side, from Cape York downwards the land trends away to the south-east to Norton Sound, in which are the mouths of the Yukon, one of the mightiest rivers of the world, its volume being as great as, or according to some writers greater than, the Mississippi. In a course of two thousand miles it runs northwards to the Arctic Circle at the now abandoned trading post of Fort Yukon, where its waters are reinforced by its tributary, the Rat or Porcupine, coming in from the north-east, and given their seaward direction to the south-west. Up this vast waterway in 1866 went Frederick Whymper and William H. Dall.

Beginning with a sledge journey of a hundred and seventy miles from Unalachleet, they struck the Yukon on the 10th of November, gliding down a high steep bank on to it. Hardly a patch of clear ice was to be seen, the snow covering the whole extent. Accumulations of hummocks had in many places been forced on the surface before the river had become thoroughly frozen, and the water was still open, running swiftly in a few isolated streaks. From bank to bank was not less than a mile, the stream flowing among several islands. As they sledged up the river the dreary expanse of snow made them almost forget they were on a sheet of ice; and, as it winds considerably, their course was often from bank to bank to cut off corners and bends. Many cliffs abutted on the stream, and islands of sombre green forest studded it in all directions.

On the 15th they reached Nulato, six hundred miles from the mouth, where they spent the winter. Here they found a curious method of fishing practised all through the season. Early in the winter large piles or stakes had been driven down into the bed of the river, and to these were affixed wickerwork traps like eel-pots on a large scale, oblong holes being kept open over them by frequently breaking the ice. This was cold work, for the temperature ran low. "In November and December," says Whymper, "I succeeded in making sketches of the fort and neighbourhood when the temperature was as low as thirty degrees below zero. It was done, it need not be said, with difficulty, and often by instalments. Between every five strokes of the pencil, I ran about to exercise myself or went into our quarters for warmth. The use of water-colours was of course impracticable—except when I could keep a pot of warm water on a small fire by my side—a thing done by me on two or three occasions, when engaged at a distance from the post. Even inside the house the spaces near the windows, as well as the floor, were often below freezing point. Once, forgetful of the fact, I mixed some colours up with water that had just stood near the oven, and wetting a small brush commenced to apply it to my drawing block. Before it reached the paper it was covered with a skin of ice, and simply scratched the surface, and I had to give up for the time being."

On the 12th of May the Nulato River broke up and ran out on the top of the Yukon ice for more than a mile upstream; and in a few days the ice of the main river was coming down in a steady flow at a rate of five or six knots, surging into mountains as it met with obstacles, and grinding and crashing and carrying all before it, whole trees and banks being swept away on its victorious march, the water rising fourteen feet above the winter level. On the 26th Whymper and Dall started with two Indians and a steersman in a skin canoe, the river still full of ice, and navigation difficult. They had proceeded but a short distance when they came to bends, round which logs and ice were sweeping at a great rate, so that it was necessary for a man to stand in the bows of the canoe, with a pole shod at one end with iron, to push away the masses of ice and tangle of driftwood. They could often feel the ice and logs rolling and scraping under the canoe; and it was not the thickness of a plank between them and destruction, but that of a piece of sealskin a tenth of an inch thick.

On the 7th of June they were two hundred and forty miles above Nulato, at the junction of the Tanana, the furthest point reached by the Russians, and soon were in a part abounding with moose owing to their seeking refuge in the stream from the millions of mosquitoes. Here the Indian hunters were busy, not wasting powder and shot, but manoeuvring round the swimming deer in their birch-bark canoes until they tired the victim out; and then stealthily approaching, securing it with a stab from their knives.

After twenty-six laborious days against the stream they reached Fort Yukon, the then furthest outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, six hundred miles from Nulato, and, of course, managed and victualled from the east. Here the amount of peltry was astonishing, the fur-room of the fort containing thousands of marten skins, hanging from the beams, and huge piles of common furs lying around, together with a considerable number of foxes, black and silver-grey, and many skins of the wolverine, thought so much more of by the Indians than by any one else that they are used as a medium of exchange. All these furs were brought in from the surrounding districts, far and near, and traded for goods, as widely distributed, among the native tribes whose representatives gathered at the fort in such a miscellaneous crowd that perhaps half a dozen dialects were heard in a morning.

In the crowd the busiest and most prominent were the primitive Tananas, gay with feathers and painted faces, looking like survivals among the local Kutchins and the Kutchins of the upper river, the Birch River men, and the Rat River men by whom the skins were brought from the natives of the northern coast, as were the messages from the Franklin search parties. Indians were all of these, distinguishable by their wearing the hyaqua or tooth-shell (Dentalium entalis) through the septum of the nose, while the Mahlemut wears a bone on each side of the mouth, a practice common with all the Innuit, or Eskimo tribes, from the Alaska Peninsula to Point Barrow, unless some other form of labret happens to be the local fashion.