CHAPTER XL 



FINAL PREPARATIOKS FOR THE PACIFIC EXPEDITIOISrS. 



IN the summer of 1737, Bering changed his head- 

 quarters to Okhotsk, and in the course of the 

 autumn and winter, the greater part of his force was 

 transferred to the same place or distributed among the 

 various intermediate stations on the Yudoma, Maya, 

 and Urak. Spangberg and Bering built Okhotsk. At 

 the junction of the Okhota and the Kukhta, on one of 

 the narrow deltas, the so-called Kushka, they erected 

 a church for the expedition, a number of houses for 

 the officers, barracks, magazines, a large dock-yard, 

 and other buildings. The old stockaded fort, four 

 miles farther up in the country, was deserted. Around 

 the military center of the expedition the town gradu- 

 ally formed and rapidly grew to become the Russian 

 metropolis on the Pacific. It cost very great exer- 

 tions to make the place inhabitable. The site was a 

 long sand-bank deposit, threatened by inundations. 

 The climate was very unhealthy, — a cold, raw fog 

 almost continually hung over this region. The party 

 was pestered with fevers, and in this swamp it was 

 that Bering lost his health. '*The place is new and 

 desolate,"' he writes. "We have sand and pebbles, no 

 vegetation whatever, and no timber in the vicinity. 



