BERING'S FIRST EXPEDITION. 2*? 



80 horses, and by the 30th over 150 horses more, and 

 also 50 oxen. 



August 11, Spangberg returned from his voyage to 

 the Bolshoya River, and on the 19th the whole com- 

 mand went on board,— some on the Fortuna and 

 others on the old vessel. Their destination was the 

 Bolshoya, situated 650 miles from Okhotsk, where they 

 arrived September 4. Here the cargoes were trans- 

 ferred to boats and, in the course of the month of 

 September, brought to the fort, a simple log fortress 

 with seventeen Russian dwellings and a chapel, twenty 

 miles from the sea. It took the whole winter to trav- 

 erse, first with boats and later with sledges, the 585 

 miles across Kamchatka, from Bolsheretsk to the lower 

 Kamchatka fort. Under the greatest difficulties, the 

 expedition now followed the course of the Kamchatka 

 River, camping at night in the snow, and enduring 

 many a fierce struggle with the inclement weather. 

 The natives were summoned from far and near to assist 

 in transporting their goods, but the undertaking proved 

 fatal to many of them. Finally on March 11, 1728, 

 Bering reached his destination, the lower Kamchatka 

 Ostrog,* where he found forty huts scattered along the 

 banks of the river, a fort, and a church. A handful 

 of Cossacks lived here. They occupied huts built above 

 the surface of the ground. They did not always eat 

 their fish raw, but in other respects lived like the 

 natives, and were in no regard much more civilized than 

 they. The fort was located twenty miles from the sea, 

 surrounded by forests of larch, which yielded excellent 



* An Ostrog is a stockaded post or village. 



