ch. xx] Russian Arctic Discoveries 177 
The Government at St Petersburg was still bent on 
rounding the extreme northern point of Siberia. Lieu- 
tenant Cheriton Laptef was appointed to command a 
second expedition, with Chelyuskin as his mate. They 
sailed from Yakutsk in July, 1739, descended the river 
Lena, and reached Cape St Thaddei in 76°47'N., but 
they were stopped by the ice, and forced to winter at 
a permanent settlement of Tunguses at the mouth of 
the Khatanga river. Convinced of the impossibility of 
rounding the cape, Laptef resolved to return to the 
Lena, but his vessel was caught in a furious gale, she 
sprang a leak, and when the wind went down, the crew 
escaped to the land with much difficulty. The vessel 
drifted away and probably sank. Laptef and his people 
were left without resources, and underwent the most 
dreadful sufferings. Many died of hunger and cold. At 
length they reached the old wintering-place on the banks 
of the Khatanga. In April, 1741, Chelyuskin was sent 
with sledges to trace the coast line and discover its 
northern point, which is in 77°3o'N. In this he succeeded, 
and this extreme northern point of Asia has since been 
known as Cape Chelyuskin. Laptef explored the Taimyr 
peninsula, and traced the river from its rise in the Taimyr 
lake to the sea. The whole party reached the Yenisei, 
and arrived at Yeniseisk at the end of August. 
In the period from 1760 to 1766 a fur-trader named 
Shalaroff made two expeditions and sighted the Liakhov 
islands, but his vessel was ultimately destroyed by the ice, 
and he died, with his crew, of cold and misery. He was 
the first to examine the great inlet called Chaun Bay. 
It was at an earlier date than this, however, that the 
Czar Peter, just before his death in 1725, gave his instruc- 
tions to Captain Vitus Bering, a Dane in the Russian 
service. Bering was despatched from St Petersburg to 
the furthest point of Siberia, with sailors and shipwrights. 
Two vessels were built, one at Okhotsk the other in 
Kamschatka, called the Fortune and the Gabriel. Sailing 
in July, 1728, Bering ascertained the existence of the strait 
between Asia and America which now bears his name. 
His second voyage was abortive, but in the third and 
final one in 1741 he left Okhotsk in a vessel called the 
St Peter, with a consort — the St Paul — commanded by 
M. I. 
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