i 76 Sport and Life. 



Black Sea, advanced eastwards, following the ever-retreating sable. 

 Crossing the Volga, he climbed the Ural, traversed the vast table 

 lands of Central Asia and the steppes of Siberia, and finally set sail 

 in crazy craft from the desolate shores of Kamchatka. Braving the 

 ice-floes and storms of the Behring Sea, he at last reached the 

 Alaskan Archipelago and the American mainland. Banded in 

 rowdy undisciplined crews, he acknowledged no superior authority, 

 and exploited the docile Aleuts and mainland Indians with truly 

 shocking rapacity and cruelty. 



The extension of Peter the Great's rule over Siberia in the first 

 quarter of the eighteenth century had first disclosed to Europe 

 the presence of hitherto unknown fur-bearing animals on the 

 shores of Behring Sea. Wonderful tales of the enormous prices 

 Chinese mandarins were willing to pay for the pelt of the sea 

 otter had filled the mind of Russia's enterprising Tsar with the 

 desire to extend exploration and land-capturing beyond the semi- 

 arctic sea of Okhotsk, on the shores of which the timber Ostrog 

 or fortress of the same name had been constructed by his orders. 

 Vitus Behring, a Dane in Russian service, was destined to be Peter 

 the Great's Columbus, for to him did the Tsar entrust the command 

 of the expedition in quest of furs and the mysterious land opposite to 

 Kamchatka. The Tsar himself, on his deathbed, drew up Behring's 

 instructions, and it is safe to say that no exploration of subsequent 

 days had about it so much of romantic as w r ell as tragic adventure. 

 Starting from St. Petersburg in February, 1725, just three days 

 before death claimed Russia's Imperial ship carpenter, it took 

 Behring and his caravan, comprising a vast number of carts and 

 sumpter animals, by which were conveyed the iron and fittings, as 

 well as provisions required for the construction of the two vessels 

 in which they were to brave the unknown seas, more than two 

 years to cross the Continent of Asia. It took the same space of 

 time to hew the timber, build and equip the ships, every nail, every 

 rope, every tool having to be transported 5000 miles across 

 inhospitable wilds ! Behring's warrants for provisions required for 

 the expedition, and which, according to Bancroft, are still to be 



