126 VITUS BEBING. 



was very well satisfied with the results. He permitted 

 him and his crew to go to Yakutsk to obtain rest, and 

 ordered him to return to St. Petersburg the next spring 

 to render in person an account of the results of the 

 expedition. His preliminary report, sent in advance, 

 received considerable attention in the cabinet of the 

 Empress, and caused much talk in the leading circles of 

 the capital. While in Yakutsk, he received orders to 

 travel day and night to reach St. Petersburg. Mean- 

 while, however, his old enemy Pissarjeff had also been 

 active. Surreptitiously, especially from Walton, who 

 was constantly at enmity with his chief, he had obtained 

 some information concerning the expedition and had 

 reported to the Senate that Spangberg had not been in 

 Japan at all, but olf the coast of Corea. This assertion 

 he sought to prove by referring to pre-Spangberg maps, 

 which, as we have noted, placed Japan eleven or twelve 

 degrees too far east, directly south of Kamchatka. This 

 gossip was credited in the Senate, and a courier was 

 dispatched to stop Spangberg. At Fort Kirinsk, on the 

 Lena, in the summer of 1740, he received orders to 

 return to Okhotsk and repeat his voyage to Japan, while 

 a commission of naval officers and scholars betook them- 

 selves to investigate the matter. These wise men, after 

 several years of deliberation, came to the conclusion that 

 Walton had been in Japan, and that Spangberg most 

 probably had been off the coast of Corea. In the 

 summer of 1742, he started out on his third expedition to 

 Japan, but as this was a complete failure, undoubtedly 

 due to Spangberg's anger on account of the government's 

 unjust and insane action, and as it has no geographical 

 significance, we shall give it no further consideration. 



