14 VITUS BERING, 



Were Asia and America connected, or was there a 

 strait between the two countries? Was there a North- 

 west and a Northeast passage ? It was these great and 

 interesting questions that were to be settled by Seringa's 

 first expedition. Peter himself had no faith in a strait. 

 He had, however, no means of knowing anything about 

 it, for at his death the east coast of Asia was known only 

 as far as the island of Yezo. The Pacific coast of America 

 had been explored and charted no farther than Cape 

 Blanco, 43° north latitude, while all of the northern por- 

 tion of the Pacific, its eastern and western coast-lines, its 

 northern termination, and its relation to the polar sea, 

 still awaited its discoverer. 



The above-mentioned ukase shows that the Czar's 

 inquisitive mind was dwelling on the possibility of being 

 able, through northeastern Asia, to open a way to the rich 

 European colonies in Central America. He knew neither 

 the enormous extent of the far East nor the vastness of 

 the ocean that separated it from the Spanish colonies. 

 Yet even at that time, various representatives of the great 

 empire living in northeastern Siberia had some knowledge 

 of the relative situation of the two continents and could 

 have given Bering's expedition valuable directions. 



Eumors of the proximity of the American continent to 

 the northeastern corner of Asia must very early have been 

 transmitted through Siberia, for the geographers of the 

 sixteenth century have the relative position of the two 

 continents approximately correct. Thus on the Barents 

 map of 1598, republished by J. J. Pontanus in 1611, a 

 large continent towers above northeastern Asia with 

 the superscription, ''America Pars," the two countries 



