72 VITUS BEKIN'G. 



had failed to furnish. The Senate had ventured so near 

 the extreme limits of the possible, that it could not but 

 end by crossing the border and demanding the impossible. 

 These numerous expeditions, scattered over half a conti- 

 nent, were exposed to so many unforeseeable accidents 

 and misfortunes, that the government, in order to render 

 support and retain its control, would necessarily have to 

 be in regular communication. But east of Moscow there 

 was no mail service. Hence the government instructed 

 Bering to establish, on consultation with the local author- 

 ities, postal communication, partly monthly and partly 

 bi-monthly, from Moscow to Kamchatka, to the Chinese 

 border by way of Irkutsk, and by a new route to Uda, — 

 as though such a matter could be accomplished through 

 consultation. The Senate might have known, and in 

 fact did know, that in the mountainous forest-region 

 between Yakutsk and Okhotsk (a distance of about seven 

 hundred miles) there was but one single Kussian hut, 

 and that all the requisites for a mail service — men, 

 horses, and roads — demanded unlimited means and most 

 extensive preparations. 



A number of plans and propositions of minor import- 

 ance are here omitted. The object has been to show, in 

 a succinct review, the origin of the Great Northern Expe- 

 dition, its enormous compass, and the grouping of its 

 various enterprises about Vitus Bering as its chief. Von 

 Baer classes the tasks to be accomplished by Bering, each 

 of which demanded separately equipped expeditions, 

 under seven heads: namely, astronomical observations 

 and determinations in Siberia, physico-geographical ex- 

 plorations, historic-ethnographical studies, the charting 



