BERING'S EXPLORATIONS 187 



The exploration and gradual conquest and settlement 

 of eastern Siberia was the work of a multitude of adven- 

 turers, known generically as Promishleniki or hunters. 

 They included the more turbulent and enterprising of the 

 border population of Siberia, such skirmishers of half 

 savage, wholly unmoral, humanity as most nations drive 

 before them, in an advance into the wilderness. Power- 

 ful from the arms which they borrowed from civilization, 

 desperately energetic, they defied cold, starvation, war, 

 the perils of the sea, and the unknown terrors of the 

 wilderness, in their love of adventure and greed of gain. 

 Penetrating a region like a creeping conflagration, con- 

 suming and destroying, yet they leave it cleared, after a 

 fashion, for the advent of a real civilization. In Asia 

 nothing but the sordid poverty of the Chukchi could hold 

 its own against them. 



Rumors of their discoveries gradually filtered through 

 the wastes of Siberia to Russia. An expedition was fitted 

 out to ascertain the facts and especially whether America 

 and Asia were really separated. Vitus Bering, a Danish 

 officer naturalized in Russia, was assigned to the com- 

 mand, with Alexis ChirikofF as his chief assistant. July 

 20, 1728, the expedition left Kamchatka for the north, 

 sailed through Bering Strait without seeing the Diomedes 

 or the American shore, and presently returned to Kam- 

 chatka. The next year in June he sailed eastward from 

 Kamchatka some sixty miles in vain search of the Ameri- 

 can continent, and then made his way back to Okhotsk. 

 A second expedition was projected in 1732, and under the 

 same commander sailed from Kamchatka June 4, 1741, to 

 find the American coast. On July i8th, Bering anchored 

 under the lee of Wingham Island near the mouth of the 

 Copper River and thence made his way westward along 

 the line of the Aleutian chain to be finally wrecked on 

 the island which now bears his name, where he died of 



