66 VITUS BERING. 



as it rolled along down through the Admiralty and 

 Academy, it assumed most startling dimensions. These 

 authorities aspired to nothing less than raising all human 

 knowledge one step higher. The Admiralty desired the 

 expedition to undertake the nautical charting of the Old 

 World from Archangel to Nipon — even to Mexico; and 

 the Academy could not be satisfied with anything less 

 than a scientific exploration of all northern Asia. As a 

 beginning, Joseph Nicolas De T Isle, professor of astron- 

 omy at the Academy, was instructed to give a graphic 

 account of the present state of knowledge of the North 

 Pacific, and in a memoir to give Bering instructions how 

 to find America from the East. The Senate also decreed 

 that the former^s brother, Louis, surnamed La Croyere, 

 an adventurer of somewhat questionable character, should 

 accompany the expedition as astronomer. Thus decree 

 after decree followed in rapid succession. On December 

 28, the Senate issued a lengthy ukase, which, in sixteen 

 paragraphs, outlined in extenso the nautico-geographical 

 explorations to be undertaken by the expedition. Com- 

 modore Bering and Lieut. Chirikofl, guided by the in- 

 structions of the Academy, were to sail to America with 

 two ships for the purpose of charting the American coast. 

 They were to be accompanied by La Croyere, who, with 

 the assistance of the surveyors Krassilnikoff and Popoff, 

 was to undertake a series of local observations through 

 Siberia, along several of the largest rivers of the country 

 and in its more important regions, across the Pacific, and 

 also along the coast of the New World. With three ships 

 Spangberg was to sail to the Kurile Islands, Japan, and 

 the still more southerly parts of Asia, while simultan- 



