76 VITUS BERING. 



barbarous country, surrounded as he was with incapable, 

 uneducated, and corruptible assistants, pestered by calum- 

 niators and secret or avowed enemies in every quarter, to 

 whom the government seemed more disposed to listen 

 than to him. More just than arbitrary, more considerate 

 than hasty, more humane than his position permitted, he 

 nevertheless had one important quality, an honest, 

 genuine, and tenacious spirit of perseverance, and this 

 saved the expedition from dissolution. The government 

 had sent him in pursuit of a golden chariot, and he 

 found more than the linch-pin. The realization, how- 

 ever, was far from that anticipated by the government. 

 Many of the projects of the original plan were but 

 partially accomplished, and others were not even at- 

 tempted; but in spite of this, the results attained by 

 Bering and his associates will stand as boundary-posts 

 in the history of geographical discovery. Many of these 

 men sealed their work with their lives, and added a 

 luster to the name of Russia,* which later explorers have 

 maintained. 



♦Note 41. 



