BEEING'S great NORTHERiq^ EXPEDITION^. 87 



of '''the old scoundrel," who thereupon in all haste 

 fled to Yakutsk, where he arrived after a nine days" 

 ride, and filled the town with his prattling falsehoods, 

 to which, however, only the Academists seem to have 

 paid any attention. 



Under circumstances where the local authorities did 

 everything in their power to hinder the development 

 of a district, it is only natural that in the settlement of 

 Okhotsk and the construction of the ships for the expe- 

 dition but slow progress was made. The enormous 

 stores which were necessary for six or eight sea-going 

 ships — provisions, cannon, powder, cables, hemp, can- 

 vas, etc., it would take two or three years to bring from 

 Yakutsk, a distance both long and tedious, and fraught 

 with danger. The work, the superhuman efforts, the 

 forethought, and perseverance that Bering and his 

 men exhibited on these transporting expeditions on the 

 rivers of East Siberia have never been described or 

 understood, and yet they perhaps form the climax in 

 the events of this expedition, every page of the his- 

 tory of which tells of suffering and thankless toil. 



In the middle of the 17th century, those Cossacks 

 that conquered the Amoor country had opened this 

 river navigation, and now Bering re-opened it. The 

 stores were transported down the Lena, up the Aldan, 

 Maya, and Yudoma rivers, thence across the Stanovoi 

 Mountains, down the Urak, and by sea to Okhotsk. 

 These transportations at first employed five hundred 

 soldiers and exiles, and later more than a thousand. 

 The season is very short. The rivers break up in the 

 early part of May, when the spring floods, full of 



