le-deep to future successes, there would have been less bickering
and delay in reaching the Pacific. Dead horses marked the trail across
two continents. The Cossack soldiers deserted and joined the banditti
that scoured the Tartar plains; and for three winters the travellers
were storm-bound in the mountains of Siberia. But at length they
reached Avacha Bay on the eastern shore of Kamchatka, and the waters of
the Pacific gladdened the eyes of the weary travellers. At
Petropavlovsk on the bay they built a fort, houses, barracks, a chapel,
and two vessels, named the _St Peter_ and the _St Paul_.

Early on the morning of June 4, 1741, the chapel bells were set
ringing. At dawn prayers were chanted to invoke the blessing of Heaven
on the success of the voyage. Monks in solemn procession paraded to
the water's edge, singing. The big, bearded men, who had doggedly,
drunkenly, profanely, religiously, marched across deserts and mountains
to reach the sea, gave comrades a last fond embrace, ran down the sand,
jumped into the jolly-boats, rowed out, and clambered up {17} the
ships' ladders. And when the reverberating roll of the fort cannon
signalled the hour of departure, anchors were weighed, and sails,
loosened from the creaking yard-arms, fluttered and filled to the wind.
While the landsmen were still cheering and waving a farewell, Bering
and his followers watched the shores slip away, the waters widen, the
mountains swim past and back. Then the _St Peter_ and the _St Paul_
headed out proudly to the lazy roll of the ocean.

Now the savants, of whom Bering carried too many with him for his own
peace of mind, had averred that he had found no Gamaland on his first
voyage because he had sailed too far north. This time he was to voyage
southward for that passage named after Juan de Fuca. This would lead
him north of Drake's New Albion in California, and north of the Spanish
cruisings about modern Vancouver Island. This was to bring him to the
mythical Gamaland. Bering knew there was no Gamaland; but in the
captain's cabin, where the savants bent all day over charts, was the
map of Delisle, the geographer of French Canada, showing vast unnamed
lands north of the Spanish possessions; and in the expedition was a
member of the Delisle family. So {18} Bering must have known or
guessed that an empire half the size of Russia lay undiscovered north
of Juan de Fuca's passage.

So confident were the members of the expeditio