86 VITUS BERING. 



of all official rank and banished to the Ladoga canal 

 as overseer of this great enterprise. Later he was 

 pardoned, but when, in 1727, he conspired against 

 Prince Menshikoff, he was deprived of everything, 

 knouted, branded, and then exiled to Siberia as a 

 colonist. After a series of vicissitudes he appeared, 

 in the capacity of harbor-master at Okhotsk, but the 

 government gave him no rank; he was not even per- 

 mitted to cover his brand. This old man, made 

 vicious by a long and unjust banishment, became 

 Bering^s evil spirit. In spite of his sixty or seventy 

 years, he was as restless, fiery and vehement in both 

 speech and action as when a youth, dissolute, cor- 

 ruptible, and slanderous — a false and malicious bab- 

 bler, a full-fledged representative of the famous Sibe- 

 rian ''^school for scandal." For six long years he 

 persecuted the expedition with his hatred and false- 

 hoods, and was several times within an ace of overthrow- 

 ing everything. He lived in a stockaded fort a few 

 miles in the country, while Spangberg's quarters were 

 down by the sea, on the so-called Kushka, a strip 

 of land in the Okhota delta, where the town was to 

 be founded. The power of each was unrestrained. 

 Both were dare-devils who demanded an obedience 

 which foretold the speedy overthrow of each. Both 

 sought to maintain their authority through imprison- 

 ment and corporal punishment. Thus they wrangled 

 for a year, PissarjefP, meanwhile, sending numerous 

 complaints to Yakutsk and St. Petersburg. But 

 Spangberg was not to be trifled with. In the fall 

 of 1736 he swore that he would effectually rid himself 



