BEKIl^G'S GREAT NOETHERN EXPEDITION. 65 



Bering's proposition should be executed, and charged the 

 Senate to take the necessary steps for this purpose. The 

 Senate, presided over by Ivan Kiriloff, an enthusiastic 

 admirer of Peter the Great, acted with dispatch. On 

 May 2, it promulgated two ukases, in which it declared 

 the objects of the expedition, and sought to indicate the 

 necessary means. Although the Senate here in the main 

 followed Bering's own proposition and made a triple 

 expedition (an American, a Japanese, and an Arctic), it 

 nevertheless betrayed a peculiar inclination to burden the 

 chief of the expedition with tasks most remote from his 

 own original plans. It directed him not only to explore 

 the Shantar Islands and reach the Spanish possessions in 

 America, something that Bering had never thought of, 

 but also included in its ukase a series of recommendations 

 for the development of Siberia, — recommendations which 

 Bering had previously made to the government, and 

 which had already provoked some definite efforts, as the 

 exiled Pissarjeff, a former officer of the Senate, had been 

 removed to Okhotsk to develop that region and extend 

 the maritime relations on the Pacific. 



He seems, however, not to have accomplished any- 

 thing, and the Senate thought it feasible to burden 

 Bering with a part of this task. He was directed to 

 supply Okhotsk with more inhabitants, to introduce 

 cattle-raising on the Pacific coast, to found schools in 

 Okhotsk for both elementary and nautical instruction, to 

 establish a dock-yard in this out-of-the-way corner, to 

 transport men and horses to Yudomskaya Krest, and to 

 establish iron-works at Yakutsk, Udinsk, and other places. 

 But this was simply the beginning of the avalanche, and 



