42 VITUS BERING. 



The name Serdze Kamen appears for the first time — 

 historically speaking — in Gerhard Fr. Miiller's Samm- 

 lung Russischer Gescliiclite, Vol. III., 1758.* He says : 

 ''Bering finally, in a latitude of 67° 18', reached a head- 

 land whence the coast recedes to the west. From this the 

 captain drew the very plausible conclusion that he now 

 had reached the most northeasterly point of Asia. But 

 here we are forced to admit that the circumstance upon 

 which the captain based his conclusion was false, as it has 

 since been learned that the above-mentioned headland 

 was identical with the one called Serdze Kamen by the 

 inhabitants of Fort Anadyr, on account of the promon- 

 tory being heart-shaped." Even this looks suspicious. 

 The account of some ignorant Cossacks is presented as a 

 corrective to the report of educated navigators, and it is 

 also indicated that the garrison at Fort Anadyr had exact 

 knowledge of the northern coast of the Chukchee penin- 

 sula, something it did not have at all.f 



But in order to understand Miiller, it is necessary to 

 make a slight digression. When Bering, in the summer of 

 1729, was on his return to St. Petersburg, he met, between 

 Okhotsk and Yakutsk, the Cossack chief Shestakoff, who 

 by the aid of Bering's ships intended to undertake an 

 extensive military expedition in the eastern seas. He 

 soon fell, however, in an engagement, but his comrade 

 Captain Pavlutski led an invasion into the land of the 

 Chukchees. From Fort Anadyr he went northward to 

 the Arctic Ocean, thence along the coast toward the east, 

 then across the Chukchee peninsula to the Pacific. A 

 more detailed account than this cannot be given, for his 



* Note 23. t Note 24. 



