Bering had brought a party, together with supplies and material, over the rough and difficult but long-traveled routes to Okhotsk. Wherever he went he found settlements and roads such as they were. He transported his material to Bolsheretsk and from there across the peninsula to Lower Kamchatka settlement. It would have been much easier and shorter to have doubled the peninsula and taken his stores by sea; one of his party had already explored the straits near Cape Lopatka, but there was the chance of disaster in this plan and, with his stores on _terra firma_, Bering cannot be blamed for taking the land route; especially as the difficulties would not inconvenience him personally. He succeeded in getting his stores and shipwrights to the place designated and there prepared himself for the voyage. In all this there was difficulty and trouble enough of a certain kind. That it all was surmounted with success is very creditable to Bering and his officers. But to call it exceptionally heroic or extraordinary, is to forget the hundreds of others who preceded Bering, without the strong arm of the government at their backs, who made the trails he followed, who founded the settlements at which he rested, who raised the dogs, the horses and the cattle which were used or consumed by his party. Whatever praise we may feel due to Bering and his companions, and it is certainly no stinted allowance, the appreciation of their struggles cannot fail to include with justice, the still more remarkable and nearly forgotten pioneer labors of the undaunted Siberiaks, who paved the way, not only for Bering's weary journey, but for the slow yet never ceasing march of civilization.