70 VITUS BERING. 



nish interpreters, guides, and laborers. The Professors, as 

 they were called, constituted an itinerant academy. 

 They drafted their own instructions, and no superior 

 authority took upon itself to make these subservient to 

 the interests of the expedition as a whole. From Feb- 

 ruary, 1734, they held one or two weekly meetings and 

 passed independent resolutions. It became a part of 

 Bering's task to move this cumbersome machine, this 

 learned republic, from St. Petersburg to Kamchatka, to 

 care for their comforts and conveniences, and render pos- 

 sible the flank movements and side sallies that either 

 scientific demands or their own freaks of will might dic- 

 tate. In the original instructions such directions were 

 by no means few. But Bering had no authority over 

 these men. They were willing to recognize his authority 

 only when they needed his assistance. None of them 

 except Bering and his former associates had any idea of 

 the mode and conditions of travel in that barbarous 

 country. That there should be lack of understanding 

 between men with such different objects in view as 

 academists and naval officers, is not very strange. Their 

 only bond of union was the Senate's senseless ukase. If 

 it had been the purpose of the government to exhibit a 

 human parallel to the ''happy families" of menageries, it 

 could hardly have acted differently. In all his move- 

 ments Bering was hampered by this academical dead- 

 weight. The Professors not only showed a lack of appre- 

 ciation of Bering's efforts in their behalf, but they also 

 stormed him with complaints, filled their records with 

 them, and concluded them — characteristically enough — 



