"The Captain Commanding Bering and Captains Spangenberg and Tschirikow, with several other naval officers, left St. Petersburg in the spring of 1733. They waited at Yakouzk and Ochozk until the vessels being built at this latter place for their expedition were completed, and when all was ready for the departure of M. de Spangenberg he was dispatched first, according to the orders of the Senate. He started, then, from Ochozk in the month of June, 1738, having three vessels under his command, to which he added a large covered row-boat of 24 oars, which he caused to be constructed at Bolscherezkoi Ostrog in Kamshatka, where he wintered. This boat was to be used to go into the narrow straits between the islands that they might find and where the ships could not go. In the summer of 1739 he went to Japan, the long chain of islands situated between Japan and Kamshatka serving to guide him. He landed at two different places in Japan and was received with great civility by the people of the country; but he never went to Matsmai, the principal place {226} on the island of Yeco, as M. de l'Isle erroneously states. He thought he had sufficiently complied with his instructions without doing so, and returning to Ochozk, passed the winter at Yakouzk. As soon as a detailed account of this voyage was seen in St. Petersburg they concluded by the route which M. Spangenberg had followed that he must have passed near the coast of Corea, and he was therefore ordered to make a second voyage in order to confirm the first. He started in 1741 and 1742, but his ship, built hastily and of unseasoned wood, leaked and obliged him to return.