128 PLANS OF PETER THE GREAT. [1728. 



regions proved as attractive as the gold and silver of America were 

 to the Spaniards. In the course of their expeditions, the Russians 

 had traced the northern shores of Asia, to a considerable distance 

 eastward from Europe, and they had formed establishments on those 

 of the peninsula of Kamtchatka. But they had not yet, by their 

 discoveries, afforded the means of determining whether Asia and 

 America were united on the north into one continent, or were sepa- 

 rated by a direct communication between the Pacific and the ocean 

 north of Asia, called the Arctic or Icy Sea ; nor, indeed, was it 

 ascertained that the sea around Kamtchatka was a part of the 

 Pacific, though it was generally believed to be so, from the traditions 

 preserved by the natives of that peninsula, of large ships having 

 been wrecked on their coasts.* 



By these conquests the Russians had been enabled to secure, in 

 addition to the other advantages, a commercial intercourse with 

 China, which was carried on, agreeably to a treaty concluded in 

 1689, by caravans, passing between certain great marts in each 

 empire. But the ambitious czar Peter, who then filled the Russian 

 throne, was not content with such acquisitions ; he was anxious to 

 know what territories lay beyond the sea bounding his dominions 

 in the east, and whether he could not, by directing his forces in 

 that way, invade the establishments of the French, the British, or 

 the Spaniards, in America. With these views, he ordered that 

 vessels should be built in Kamtchatka, and equipped for voyages of 

 discovery, to be made according to instructions which he himself 

 drew up ; while, at the same time, other vessels should proceed 

 from Archangel, on the White Sea, eastward, to explore the ocean 

 north of Europe and Asia, in search of a navigable communication, 

 or north-east passage, through it from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 



Various circumstances prevented the execution of any of these 

 projects during the lifetime of Peter. His widow and successor, 

 Catharine, however, resolved to carry them into fulfilment ; and a 

 small vessel was, at length, in 1728, completed and prepared at the 

 mouth of the River of Kamtchatka, on the north-east side of that 

 peninsula, for a voyage of discovery, to be made agreeably to the 

 instructions of the great czar. The command of the expedition 

 was intrusted to Vitus Bering, a Dane, who had been selected for 



* The particulars related in the present chapter are derived, principally, from the 

 History of Kamtchatka, by Krascheninikof — the Account of the Russian Voyages 

 from Asia to America, by Muller — and the Account of the Discoveries of the Russians 

 in the North Pacific, by Coxe, the last edition of which, published in 1803, is the 

 most complete work on the subject. 



