When Bering had crossed the
rivers and mountains of the two continents--first Europe, then Asia--and
reached the Pacific, his expedition had _only begun_. Little remains to
Russia of what he accomplished but the group of rocky islets where he
perished. But judged by the difficulties which he overcame; by the
duties desperately impossible, done plainly and doggedly, by death heroic
in defeat--Bering's expedition to northwestern America is without a peer
in the annals of the New World discovery.[4]
[1] I adopt the views of Dr. Stejneger, of the National Museum,
Washington, on this point, as he has personally gone over every foot of
the ground.
[2] Dr. George Davidson, President of the Geographical Society of the
Pacific, has written an irrefutable pamphlet on why Kyak Island and Sitka
Sound must be accepted as the landfalls of Bering and Chirikoff.
[3] Thus the terrible Sitkan massacre of a later day was preceded by the
slaughter of the first Russians to reach America. The Russian government
of a later day originated a comical claim to more territory on the ground
that descendants of these lost Russians had formed settlements farther
down the coast, alleging in proof that subsequent explorers had found
red-headed and light-complexioned people as far south as the Chinook
tribes.
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