Thus then they sailed on, thinking they were still coasting New Guinea. So doing, they arrived at the straits which still bear the name of the explorer, and discovered a little island which he called New Britain. He had now been over fifteen months at sea and the _Roebuck_ was only provisioned for twenty months, so Dampier, who never had the true spirit of the explorer in him, left his discoveries and turned homewards. The ship was rotten, and it took three months to repair her at Batavia before proceeding farther. With pumps going night and day, they made their way to the Cape of Good Hope; but off the island of Ascension the _Roebuck_ went down, carrying with her many of Dampier's books and papers. But though many of the papers were lost, the "Learned and Faithful Dampier" as he is called, the "Prince of Voyagers," has left us accounts of his adventures unequalled in those strenuous ocean-going days for their picturesque and graphic details. [Illustration: DAMPIER'S STRAITS AND THE ISLAND OF NEW BRITAIN. From a map in Dampier's _Voyages_, 1697.] CHAPTER XLIV BEHRING FINDS HIS STRAIT In the great work of Arctic exploration during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is to England and Russia that we owe our knowledge at the present day. It is well known how Peter the Great of Russia journeyed to Amsterdam to learn shipbuilding under the Dutch, and to England to learn the same art under the English, and how the Russian fleet grew in his reign. Among the Danish shipbuilders at Petersburg was one Vitus Behring, already a bold and able commander on the high seas. The life of the great Russian Czar was drawing to its close--he was already within a few weeks of the end--when he planned an expedition under this same Vitus Behring, for which he wrote the instructions with his own hands. "(1) At Kamtchatka two decked boats are to be built. (2) With these you are to sail northward along the coast and, as the end of the coast is not known, this land is undoubtedly America. (3) For this reason you are to inquire where the American coast begins, and go to some European colony and, when European ships are seen, you are to ask what the coast is called, note it down, make a landing, and after having charted the coast return." Were Asia and America joined together, or was there a strait between the two? The question was yet undecided in 1725. Indeed, the east coast of Asia was only known as far as the island of Yezo, while the Pacific coast of America had been explored no farther than New Albion.