224 General A. W. Greely — Bering's First Voyage. 



efficient service he rendered first to his cliief and later to his 

 shipwrecked comrades. He writes in " Une Lettre " as follows : 



" Let us now come to the details of the second expedition, which M. de 

 risle pretends owes its origin to a map of his and was undertalcen accord- 

 ing to a memoir made by himself. ' I had the honor,' he says, ' in 1731 to 

 present this chart to the Empress Anne and to the Senate, in order to 

 stimulate the Eussians to explorations of what still remained to be dis- 

 covered, and it had its effect.' Was it time or age which caused M. de 

 risle to commit this error ? Could he have forgotten the orders which 

 led him to make the chart in question ? Had he remembered it, perhaps 

 he would not have said that he presented the chart to tlie Empress, and 

 still less that he made it in order to excite the Russians to new dis- 

 coveries. At that time I visited M. de I'lsle ; I was a witness of his geo- 

 graphical labors, as far as they had new discoveries for their object ; I 

 acted as interpreter to M. Bering in the conversations which he had with 

 him ; and I can assert positively that when M. de I'Isle began that chart 

 the second expedition was already ordered, and Captain Bering, knowing 

 what was still wanting to his discoveries, offered to continue them and 

 his lieutenants with him ; and they each received promotion in conse- 

 quence. 



" It is therefore true that M. de I'lsle's work must be attributed to the 

 orders of his superiors ; and I remember that the Empress Anne having 

 commissioned her secretarj'- to give the necessary instructions to M. Bering 

 for his new voyage, the latter did not think he could carry it on success- 

 fully without getting from the Academy all the information possible con- 

 cerning the countries and waters where he was to navigate. The Academy 

 was therefore called upon by the Senate, and it ordered M. de I'Isle to 

 compile the chart of which I speak, and in order that it might be better 

 understood, to explain it in a memoir ; Avhich having been done, the chart 

 and the memoir were presented to the Senate by the Academy ; so that 

 there can be no possible doubt that, so far from having stimulated the 

 Russians to new discoveries, so far from having occasioned the new voyage 

 of M. Bering, M. de I'Isle only worked accordina; to the orders he had 

 received. There arises another question, as to whether the memoir caused 

 the success of the expedition, which I will treat later on. However that 

 may be, the Senate gave a copy of it to M. Bering as well as of the chart. 

 I took a second copy, which enables me to compare it with wlrat M. de 

 risle tells us about it in his last memoir from Paris. 



" He pretends to have proposed three different routes to be followed in 

 order to discover what was still unknown. The first, to sail straight 

 to Japan, pass Yeco, or rather the straits which separate it from the 

 island of the States and the land of the Company, to discover what is to 

 the north of Yeco and search for the passage between that country and 

 the coast of eastern Tartary. This is what is called giving advice after 

 the event. In the original memoir there is not a word said about any 

 such researches. M. de I'Isle contents himself with proposing three differ- 

 ent routes for finding the countries lying near to Kamshatka on the east. 



