BEGINNING OF SECOND EXPEDITION 13 



and his cossacks in the ship Gabriel later on, in 1735/^ went much 

 farther, viz. to 66° north latitude. 



On Captain Bering's return the eager world consequently re- 

 ceived nothing more than a chart and a defective account of the 

 already well-known Kamchatka, besides a few verbal reports of 

 the Anadyr cossacks, according to which the Chukchi Promon- 

 tory was really separated from America by open sea, but that on 

 the 51st parallel, opposite Lopatka, there was a chain of islands 

 stretching out towards Japan, towhich [islands] the cossacks, with 

 a few surveyors, had ventured out sometime before in very frail 

 vessels and [of which islands they] had actually explored thirteen. ^5 



On Captain Bering's return to Moscow in 1730 it was at 

 once realized how little the object had been attained and yet 

 how much reason there was still left for supposing the main- 

 land of America to be near. At the same time there arose a desire 

 to secure information about the islands lying south of Kamchatka 

 towards Japan. Out of these considerations, therefore, grew the 

 second, great Kamchatka Expedition, so costly and arduous on 

 account of the great distances, the remote and toilsome transpor- 

 tation of provisions and materials, besides many other causes 

 which might perhaps have been reduced considerably if an un- 

 biased and conscientious report on the farthest parts of x*\sia and 

 their resources, based on all the information then at hand, had 

 been submitted. In particular, it must have been well known to 

 the ofificers employed on the first expedition how oppressive and 

 injurious the transportation of the provisions, at that time rela- 

 tively so insignificant, had been to the few inhabitants of the 

 Lena regions and of Kamchatka and how many hundreds of the 

 latter lost their lives in the journeys from the Bolshaya River 

 to the harbor of Avacha.^^ It w^ould then have been easily seen 



1* 1732, not 1735. (G) 



15 The most northerly of the Kurile Islands were visited by Ivan 

 Kozirevski and companions in 1713; in 1720 or 1721 Luzhin and Evreinov 

 examined a number of these islands at the order of Peter the Great (see 

 Vol. I. p. 6). (G) 



16 Across the southern part of Kamchatka from its western to its 

 eastern side (see Vol. i, Fig. 3 and PI. I). 



