Martin Spanberg, another Danish
navigator, huge of frame, vehement, passionate, tyrannical out
dauntless, always followed by a giant hound ready to tear any one who
approached to pieces, and Alexei Chirikoff, an able Russian, were
seconds in command. They encountered all the difficulties to be
expected transporting ships, rigging, and provisions across two
continents. Spanberg and his men, winter-bound in East Siberia, were
reduced to eating their dog harness and shoe-straps for food before
they came to the trail of dead horses that marked Bering's path to the
sea, and guided them to the fort at Okhotsk.
Bering did exactly as Czar Peter had ordered. He built the two-deckers
at Kamchatka. Then he followed the coast northward past St. Lawrence
Island, which he named, to a point where the shore seemed to turn back
on itself northwestward at 67 degrees 18 minutes, which proved to
Bering that Asia and America were _not_ {12} united.[8] And they had
found no "Gamaland," no new world wedged in between Asia and America,
Twice they were within only forty miles of America, touching at St.
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