verification, but circumstances were against him and he did not reach there; and his Japanese trip remained discredited until the Russian geographers knew better. His voyage thither had, however, used such a stock of provisions that it was two years before the deficiency could be made up, and it was actually the 4th of September, 1740, seven and a half years after leaving St. Petersburg, when Bering, in the specially-built _St. Peter_, and Tschirikof, in her sister the _St. Paul_, got off outward bound to America. In about three weeks they were at Awatcha Bay on the east of Kamchatka, anchored in the fine harbour named Petropaulovsk after the two ships, and here they had to stay for the winter, so that they did not leave Russian territory until the 4th of the following June. A few days out the ships were separated in a fog and storm, and the _St. Paul_ reached the American coast first, at Kruzof Island on the western shore of Sitka Sound. The _St. Peter_ three days afterwards, on the 18th of July, drifted to the coast more to the northward, at Cape St. Elias near the mighty mountain of that name. In this neighbourhood amid much fog Bering stayed six weeks until he was blown out to sea, when, his men beginning to die from scurvy, he resolved to return to Kamchatka. It was a voyage of misfortune in a continual downfall, the men in want, misery, and sickness, continuously at work in the cold and wet, becoming fewer and fewer, so that there were not enough to work the ship properly. It ended on one of the Commander Islands by the vessel being lifted by the sea clear over a reef into calm water. Bering died—the island is named after him—and the survivors of the crew, building a boat from the materials of the _St. Peter_, arrived at Petropaulovsk on the 27th of August, bringing with them a quantity of sea-otter skins, which did more for discovery in those seas than any imperial expedition. [Illustration: DRIVING THE FUR SEAL]