132 BERING STRAIT 



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. Where- 

 upon, 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 



