32 BEGINNING OF SECOND EXPEDITION 



here or in Moscow, a year's pay in advance and, if they desire it, another 

 year's paj^ in advance either at Tobolsk or Yakutsk, so that they may 

 get their outfits and depart in a contented frame of mind. Bering should 

 arrange with the governor of Siberia and the vice governor at Yakutsk 

 how the men are to be paid after that. 



i6. Louis Delisle de la Croyere,^^ at the recommendation of the 

 Academy, is to have charge of the astronomical, physical, and other 

 scientific observations of that nature. Instructions for that purpose have 

 been given him.'^ He is to have two geodesists to help him, Simeon 

 Popov and Andrei Krasilnikov, who have been studying in the St. Peters- 

 burg Observatory. Professor de la Croyere requests that he have an 

 interpreter who knows French or Latin and a mechanic who understands 

 repairing his instruments. These two men are to be furnished 

 him. 



Advance Parties 



Detachments of the expedition began leaving St. Petersburg in 

 February, 1733, but Bering, who brought up the rear, did not 

 get away until April, waiting apparently for supplementary in- 

 structions, which were issued in March, ^* permitting him to build 

 the ships at Okhotsk or in Kamchatka. The route followed was 

 the same as the one taken at the time of the first expedition. 

 Spanberg was in the lead and had orders to hasten to Okhotsk 

 to supervise the completion of the ships which Pisarev was sup- 

 posed to have on the ways or perhaps launched. When Spanberg 

 reached his destination early in 1735 he found no Pizarev, no 

 ships, no quarters, no food, no Russian agriculturalists with full 

 granaries, no Tungus with herds of fat cattle, nothing but the 

 old cheerless and bare village that he had left behind him five 

 years before. He was probably not surprised, for he must have 

 heard on the way of the worthlessness and the evil deeds of 

 Pisarev. 



12 Ix)uis Delisle de la Croyere was the half brother of Guillaume Delisle and 

 Joseph Nicolas_Delisle, two well-known geographers of the first half of the eight- 

 eenth century. Joseph Nicolas was a member of the Russian Academy and was 

 instrumental in securing this position for Louis. 



13 A copy of these instructions, drawn up by Joseph Nicolas Delisle, is in the 

 Library of Congress. 



14 Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, Vol. 9, No. 6351. 



