heeview of Bering’s First Hxpedition, 1725-30. 165 
seems insoluble. Whatever conclusion one arrives at, it is diffi- 
cult to acquit Bering of all responsibility for the misconception, 
if, as Lauridsen claims, he was responsible for the chart of Du 
Halde in the form it was engraved. 
In his report he states that their northernmost latitude was 
67° 18’, that “all along the seacoast to this place wind elevated 
mountains.” On turning to the Du Halde chart we find the range 
of mountains continued along the Chukchi coast until it reaches 
the latitude of 67° 18’ where it stops. If Bering drew the chart 
so, it would have been deception, but it is quite as probable that 
the editor modified the chart in engraving it, to correspond to his 
understanding of Bering’s ambiguity. As this would present 
nothing questionable to the reader, in the absence of the details 
omitted by Bering, it would have been nothing surprising if 
Campbell’s interpolation of a false longitude for Lower Kam- 
chatka, in his list of positions, might have been, not a typograph- 
ical error, but an attempt to make the position agree with this 
erroneous assumption. If it was a pure accident, the coincidence 
is extraordinary. Of course Bering never was on this coast but 
Du Halde’s map is so engraved as to lead directly to the false 
inference that he had been. 
Again Bering says in his Report that at his turning point the 
land no longer extended to the north and that no projecting 
points could be observed in any direction. Since he had deliber- 
ately sailed away from the shores without attempting to follow 
their trend this observation would be absurd unless we suppose it 
addressed to a reader who took it for granted that the vessel was 
still skirting the coast. There is no mention in his Report of the 
fact that he had sailed away from the coast, nor of the still more 
important fact that the soundings showed that the water was 
comparatively shallow and discolored. Of course in the absence 
of direct proof of the separation of Asia and America this last 
‘evidence would tend to indicate that Bering was only in a bay or 
shallow arm of the sea and that he suppressed it shows, if not a 
want of candor, at least an injudicious reticence. 
The map for the day when it was made (in the earlier version) 
was a good one, and is appropriately praised by Cook, who had a 
copy of Campbell’s Harris on his vessel when exploring in the 
same region fifty years later. 
In his report of the trip eastward from Kamchatka in 1729, 
Bering says nothing about the weather being foggy or stormy, 
