Review of Bering’s First Expedition, 1725-30. 163 
he would have been disposed to accept as conclusive evidence 
which would not be so regarded by critics. All the evidence 
shows Bering as faithful to the letter of his orders, honest, 
patient with the ill-doing or insubordination of others, but per- 
fectly satisfied with the accomplishment of what he had been 
specifically directed to perform, and with a tendency to limit the 
specifications to the narrowest construction they would bear. He 
adventured nothing beyond. In the arbitrary government under 
which he served, with the violent competition between foreign 
officers in the Russian service for promotion in rank and pay, who 
can criticise him for the prudence and caution which kept him 
well within his instructions? I certainly do not. But to say 
that he was a cautious, prudent and sagacious officer, is a different 
thing from asserting he was a daring, adventurous and heroic ex- 
plorer. Ihave not been able to discover anything in his career 
justifying the latter estimate of his character. 
At all events in the present case it must in time have occurred 
to him, or have been suggested by his officers or by the Kam- 
chatkans after his return that the mere sailing off shore in admit- 
tedly shallow water for twenty-four hours, was not an absolutely 
conclusive proof that the continents were separated. Here was a 
man with a new vessel, a full crew, a year’s provisions for all 
hands, who has come half around the globe, taking three and a 
half years to do it, building ships and at no end of labor of one 
sort and another ; all this to get into the region where there is a 
question to be answered ; and when he gets there he barely gives 
twenty-four hours to searching for that answer with a month of 
the season still available for work; and then starts for home 
without settling the question ; with a right conclusion, it is true, 
but not of his own discovery, and without securing definite proof 
to defy critics. 
Leaving out of account the continent within half a day’s sail 
which he fairly ran away from, ignorantly, where is there any- 
thing adventurous, daring or heroic in such conduct ? 
It is evident that if Bering had sailed along the coast which 
the Chukchis said extended to the westward, instead of going off 
shore, away from it, he would have confirmed that part of their 
testimony, and given high probability to the assumption of their 
correctness in the rest. 
As it was, he left the question in a state so unsettled as to be a 
subject of debate for nearly half a century ; even authorities so 
