84 VITUS BERING. 



Aldan and Maya^ but winter came on and his boats 

 were frozen in on the Yudoma. H« started out on foot 

 by the familiar route across the Stanovoi Mountains to 

 Okhotsk, which place he reached after enduring great 

 hardship and suffering; but even here he found no 

 roof for shelter. He was forced to subsist on car- 

 casses and roots, and not until the spring fishing 

 began and a provision caravan sent by Bering ar- 

 rived, did he escape this dire distress. In the early 

 summer, Pissarjeff put in an appearance, and very 

 soon a bitter and fatal enmity arose between these 

 two men. 



Spangberg was born in Jerne near Esbjerg in Jut- 

 land (Denmark), probably about the year 1698. He 

 was the son of well-to-do parents of the middle 

 class. In the Jerne churchyard there is still to be seen 

 a beautiful monument on the grave of his brother, 

 the '^'^ estimable and well-born Chr. Spangberg;^' 

 nothing else is known of his early life. In 1720, he 

 entered the Russian fleet as a lieutenant of the fourth 

 rank, and for a time ran the packet-boat between 

 Kronstadt and Liibeck, whereupon he took part in 

 Bering's first expedition as second in command. In 

 1732, for meritorious service on this expedition, he 

 was made a captain of the third rank. He was an 

 able, shrewd, and energetic man, a practical seaman, 

 active and vehement, inconsiderate of the feelings of 

 others, tyrannical and avaricious. He spoke the Rus- 

 sian language only imperfectly. His fame preceded 

 him throughout all Siberia, and Sokoloff says that many 

 thought him some general, incognito, others an 



