190 VITUS BERING. 



and during Elizabeth ^s inert administration, all modern 

 enterprises, the Northern Expedition among them, were 

 allowed to die a natural death. At Avacha and Ok- 

 hotsk affairs wore a sorrowful aspect. The forces of 

 the expedition had been decimated by sickness and death, 

 their supplies were nearly exhausted, their rigging and 

 sails destroyed by wind and weather, the vessels more 

 or less unseaworthy, and East Siberia drained and de- 

 vastated by famine; only Bering's great powers of ]Derse- 

 verance could have collected the vanishing forces for a 

 last endeavor. On September 23, 1743, an imperial 

 decree put an end to any further undertakings. Mean- 

 while, the crew of the St. Peter had, in August, 1742, 

 returned to Avacha in a boat made from the timber of 

 the stranded vessel. Chirikoff had previously departed 

 for Okhotsk, to which place also Spangberg returned 

 from his third voyage to Japan. Gradually the forces 

 of the various expeditions gathered in Tomsk, where, 

 first under the supervision of Spangberg and Chirikoff, 

 and later that of Waxel and other officers, they re- 

 mained until 1745. Thus ended the Great Northern 

 Expedition. 



But Bering's ill fate pursued him even after death. 

 During the reign of Empress Elizabeth, nothing was 

 done to make known the results of these great and 

 expensive explorations, nor to establish the reputation of 

 the discoverers. The reports of Bering and his co- 

 workers, which make whole cartloads of manuscript, 

 were buried in the archives of the Admiralty. Only 

 now and then did a meager, and usually incorrect, ac- 

 count come to the knowledge of the world. Some of the 



