Bering sailed for Okhotsk | L. | July 14. | July 25. Bering arrived at Okhotsk | M. Ber. | July 23. | Aug. 3. Bering left Okhotsk | H. | July 29. | Aug. 9. Total eclipse of the moon | | | same day, but not visible | | | in this part of Asia | Oppolzer. | July 29. | Aug. 9. | | | 1730. | | | Bering arrived at St. | | | Petersburg | H. M. B. L. | March 1. | March 12. ------------------------------+-------------+------------+----------- SYNOPSIS OF THE VOYAGE. The dates are reduced to the Julian calendar from the nautical account. The longitude is stated in degrees east from Greenwich. June 10/21, 1728. The vessel, which was named the _Gabriel_, was launched at the Lower Kamchatka fort and loaded with a year's supply of provisions for forty men (B. C. H. M.). She resembled the packet boats used in the Baltic. _Notes._--This vessel was constructed of the Kamchatkan spruce, a species according to Kittlitz closely resembling _Abies canadensis_ of America. There is also a smaller species, _A. mertensiana_, and by distillation of these two trees the deficiency in their supply of tar or pitch was made up. The rigging, sail-cloth, oakum and anchors had been transferred with great labor from Tobolsk. The planking and timbers were doubtless fastened with trenails and not with spikes, so the amount of iron used was much smaller than it would be in most modern vessels. The provisioning of the expedition is the subject of a fanciful paragraph garbled from Bering's original report, which has been quoted by every one of the historians of the voyage from D'Anville to Lauridsen. I transcribe it from Brooke's translation of 1736, pp. 437-8. "The provisions consisted of Carrots for want of Corn (=grain or wheat), the fat of Fish uncured served instead of Butter and salt fish supplied the place of all other meats." Campbell in Harris' Voyages, p. 1020, still further enlarges this statement and Lauridsen puts it "Fish oil was his butter and dried fish his beef and pork. Salt he was obliged to get from the sea," and "he distilled spirits from 'sweet straw.'"