CHAPTER IX 

 THE END OF THE EXPEDITION 



Bering's second expedition came officially to an end in 1749, 

 although very little in the line of exploration and discovery was 

 done after 1742. Counting from the time when Peter the Great 

 signed the instructions for the first expedition, twenty-five 

 years had been spent in the attempt to solve the mysteries of the 

 North Pacific and the Arctic. Many of them were solved. It 

 was proved that a northeast passage was impracticable; that 

 Novaya Zemlya was not a peninsula; that the Asiatic coast 

 extended much farther to the eastward than was supposed; that 

 Terra de leso, Company Land, and Gama Land, as pictured by 

 the cartographers, did not exist ; that Japan was an island ; and 

 that the American coast ran in a northwesterly direction from 

 Cape Blanco. In brief, it made clear all the points which were in 

 doubt at the time of Peter's last visit to Paris. 



Unfortunately, the one question, the important question, the 

 raisoyi d'etre of these undertakings, whether Asia and America 

 were united, was not answered, owing to the fact that the explorers 

 along the Arctic coast were unable to go from the Kolyma to the 

 Anadyr. The same questions were asked after the second expe- 

 dition as at the end of the first expedition ; and they continued 

 to be asked until another Russian, Baron Ferdinand Wrangell, 

 answered them during the winters of 1821 and 1823, when he 

 walked along the Arctic shore from the Kolyma to Kolyuchin 

 Island, a place that had been charted by Billings, of the Russian 

 Navy, in 1791. So, after all, Russia did solve that problem, and 

 to her belongs the credit. 



It may be of some interest to the reader to know what became 

 of the officers who survived the hard voyage. Chirikov passed 

 the winter of 1741-1742 at Petropavlovsk, and in the spring he 



