SPANGBERG'S VOYAGE TO JAPAN 133 



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 Feb- 

 ruary, 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 astonish- 

 ment that the Japanese knew as much about maps as 

 he did. He was still more astonished on his return to 



