It was at an earlier date than this, however, that the Czar Peter, just before his death in 1725, gave his instructions to Captain Vitus Bering, a Dane in the Russian service. Bering was despatched from St Petersburg to the furthest point of Siberia, with sailors and shipwrights. Two vessels were built, one at Okhotsk the other in Kamschatka, called the _Fortune_ and the _Gabriel_. Sailing in July, 1728, Bering ascertained the existence of the strait between Asia and America which now bears his name. His second voyage was abortive, but in the third and final one in 1741 he left Okhotsk in a vessel called the _St Peter_, with a consort--the _St Paul_--commanded by Lieutenant Chirikof. George Wilhelm Steller was with Bering as a naturalist. The Aleutian Islands were explored and the grand peak of Mount St Elias was discovered and named. Scurvy broke out among the crew and the commodore himself was attacked by it. In November the _St Peter_ was wrecked on the island which afterwards received the name of the ill-fated discoverer. Bering was very ill. He was carried on shore and placed in a trench dug in the side of a sand-hill. Here he was almost buried alive, for the sand kept continually rolling down, and he requested that it might not be moved as it kept him warm. In this miserable condition Bering died on December 8th, 1741. Steller, who was the ship’s surgeon, as well as naturalist, was very anxious to procure fresh food for his patients. He attributed the cure of those who recovered from the scurvy to the flesh of the sea-otter. Nine hundred skins of these were collected, for which the Chinese at Kiakta, on the Russian frontier, would pay at the rate of £30 a piece. Thirty of the crew died on the island, and the rest made their way to Kamschatka in a boat built from the wreck of the _St Peter_. Steller discovered a rare and previously unknown species of manatee or sea cow, which was named _Rhytina Stelleri_. This animal not long after became extinct. Next to Bering Strait the most important Russian Arctic discovery was the group of islands off the coast between the mouths of the Lena and Indigirka, now known as the Liakhov or New Siberian Islands. They consist of five large and some small islands between 73° 10′ and 76° 10′ N. Liakhov, the most southerly, is only 25 miles from the Siberian coast at Sviatoi-nos. It is 50 miles long and 30 broad. At a distance of 55 miles N.N.W. of Liakhov is Kotelnoi, 100 miles long by 60 broad. To the east Kotelnoi is connected by a sandbank with Faddiev (Thaddei) Island, which is 50 miles long by 30, with a narrow spit 35 miles long running out to the north-west. Faddiev is separated from New Siberia Island by a strait 15 miles across, and Bennett Island lies due north of the latter.