56 VITUS BERING. 



were now to take up the fight against these prejudices. 

 Bering declared that he had sailed around Kamchatka 

 without having seen anything of these lands, although he 

 had — in a different direction, however — noticed signs of 

 land. On his map, Kamchatka was represented as a defi- 

 nitely defined region, and hence Guillaume De Tlsle's 

 structure had received its first blow, in case Bering's 

 representations should be accepted. But Bering^'s repu- 

 tation had been undermined in still another direction. 

 The above-mentioned Cossack chief Shestakoff had, dur- 

 ing his sojourn in Eussia, distributed various rough con- 

 tour sketches of northeastern Asia. This brave warrior, 

 however, knew just as little about wielding a pen as he 

 did a pencil. The matter of a few degrees more or less in 

 some coast-lines did not seriously trouble him. Even his 

 own drawings did not agree. Northeast of the Chukchee 

 peninsula he had sketched an extensive country, which 

 Bering had not seen. 



It is characteristic of Joseph De Tlsle that he accepted 

 both Shestakoff and Strahlenberg, and as late as in 1753 

 still clung to their outlines. In the first place, it satisfied 

 his family pride to be able to maintain his brother's views 

 of the cartography of these regions (and of his views 

 Strahlenberg's were but an echo) , and it moreover satis- 

 fied his predisposition to that which was vague and hypo- 

 thetical. At first De Tlsle succeeded in carrying out his 

 wishes, and in 1737 the Academy published a map of Asia 

 in which it would prove extremely difficult to find any 

 trace of Bering's discoveries.* It was accordingly quite 

 the proper thing to consider Bering's first expedition 



* Note 34. 



