BERIl^G^S GREAT NORTHERK EXPEDITION. 89 



intermediate station for the expedition. Here were the 

 dwellings of two officers, a barrack, two earth-huts, six 

 warehouses, and a few other buildings and winter- 

 huts. In these warehouses the goods were stored, 

 to be conveyed, in the following winter, on horseback 

 across the Stanovoi Mountains to the mountain stream 

 Urak, which, after a course of two hundred versts, 

 reaches the sea three miles south of Okhotsk. 



For this part of the expedition, new winter- huts on 

 the Stanovoi Mountains, and magazines, river boats, 

 and piers on the Urak had to be built. This river is 

 navigable only for a few days after the spring thaw. 

 Then it boils along at the rate of six miles an hour, 

 often making a trip down its course a dangerous one. 

 Losseff says that in this way, other things being favor- 

 able, Okhotsk was reached in three years. The brief 

 account which has here been attempted gives but a 

 faint idea of the labor, perseverance, and endurance 

 requisite to make one of these expeditions. Barges 

 and boats had to be built at three different places, 

 roads had to be made along rivers, over mountains, 

 and through forests, and piers, bridges, storehouses, 

 winter-huts and dwellings had to be constructed at 

 these various places. Not only this. They suffered 

 many misfortunes. Boats and barges were lost, men 

 and beasts of burden were drowned, deserted, or were 

 torn to pieces by wolves, — and all these difficulties 

 Bering and his assistants overcame through their own 

 activity, without the support of the Siberian govern- 

 ment, yes, in spite of its ill will, both concealed and 

 manifest. In 1737, he reported to the Admiralty: 



