The question arises--where does Bering stand among the world heroes? The world loves success better than defeat; and spectacular success better than duty plainly done. If success means accomplishing what one sets out to do in spite of almost insuperable difficulties--Bering won success. He set out to discover the northwest coast of America; and he perished doing it. But if heroism means a something more than tangible success; if it means that divine quality of fighting for the truth independent of reward, whether one is to be beaten or not; if it means setting to one's self the task of perishing for a truth, without the slightest hope of establishing that truth--then, Bering stands very high indeed among the world's heroes. Steller, who had cursed him for not remaining longer at Mount St. Elias, bore the highest testimony to his integrity and worth. It may be said that a stronger type of hero would have scrunched into nothingness the vampire blunderers who misled the ship; but it must be remembered that stronger types of heroes usually save their own skins and let the underlings suffer. While Bering _might_ have averted the disaster that attended the expedition, it must not be forgotten that when he perished, there perished the very soul of the great enterprise, which at once crumbled to pieces. On a purely material plane, what did Bering accomplish? {56} He dispelled forever the myth of the Northeast Passage if the world would have but accepted his conclusions. The coast of Japan was charted under his direction. The Arctic coast of Asia was charted under his direction. A country as large as from Maine to Florida, or Baltimore to Texas, with a river comparable only to the Mississippi, was discovered by him. The furs of this country for a single year more than paid all that Russia spent to discover it; all that the United States later paid to Russia for it. A dead whale thrown up on the shore proved a godsend to the weak and famishing castaways. As their bodies grew stronger, the spirit of merriment that gilds life's darkest clouds began to come back, and the whale was jocularly known among the Russians as "our magazine of provisions." Then parties of hunters began going out for the sea-otter, which hid its head during storm under the kelp of the sea fields. Steller knew the Chinese would pay what in modern money is from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars for each of these sea-otter skins; and between nine hundred and one thousand were taken by the wrecked crew. The same skin of prime quality sells in a London auction room to-day for one thousand dollars. And in spring, when the sea-otter disappeared, there came herds--herds in millions upon millions--of another visitant to the shores of the Commander Islands--the fur seal, {57} which afforded new hunting to the crew, and new wealth to the world. [Illustration: Seals in a Rookery on Bering Island.]