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Updated: September 11, 2025
Late in the spring we were to return to Gizhiga with all the information which we could gather relative to the country between that point and the Arctic Circle. The Major himself would remain at Gizhiga until about December 17th, and then leave on dog-sledges with Viushin and a small party of Cossacks for the settlement of Okhotsk.
The scenery from this point in clear weather must be magnificent, as it overlooks the Tigil Valley and the Okhotsk Sea on one side, and the Pacific Ocean, the valleys of the Yolofka and the Kamchatka, and the grand peaks of Suveilich and Kluchefskoi on the other.
It was so dark that we could not see the land on either side of the constantly widening gulf; there was no sign of the Onward; and in all probability there was not another vessel in any part of the Okhotsk Sea.
We had got very tired of the stink of their blubber, and the never-ending worry connected with the preservation of the baleen; besides, we had not yet accumulated any fund of enthusiasm about getting a full ship, except as a reason for shortening the voyage, and we quite understood that what black oil we had got would be landed at Hawaii, so that our visit to the Okhotsk Sea, with its resultant store of oil, had not really brought our return home any nearer, as we at first hoped it would.
The Stanavoi range of mountains, which sweeps up around the Okhotsk Sea from the Chinese frontier, keeps everywhere near the coast line, and sends down between its lateral spurs hundreds of small rivers and streams which run through deep wooded valleys to the sea.
The Rhytina stelleri, a species of walrus formerly frequenting Bering Strait in millions, was completely exterminated between the years 1741-68. Many of the fur-bearing animals, which attracted the Cossacks from the Urals to the Sea of Okhotsk, and which were the true cause of the conquest of Siberia, have become extremely rare.
It was at that time one of the most important and flourishing settlements upon the coast of the Okhotsk Sea, and controlled all the trade of north-eastern Siberia as far north at the Anadyr and as far west as the village of Okhotsk.
We sold our sleigh, fur bag, pillows, tea-equipment, and the provisions we had left, for what they would bring a beggarly sum; took a train the same day for St. Petersburg; and reached the Russian capital on the 9th of January, eleven weeks from the Okhotsk Sea by way of Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Tiumen, Ekaterineburg, and Nizhni Novgorod.
In all, nine ships had been built on the Pacific to freight supplies across from Okhotsk to the eastern side of Kamchatka, two to carry Bering to the new continent of "Gamaland" which the savants persisted in putting on the maps, three to explore the region between Russia and Japan. Now, Bering knew there was no "Gamaland" except in the ignorant, heady imaginings of the foolish geographers.
The poor fellow was afterwards driven insane by excitements and hardships such as these which I have described, and probably to some extent by this very expedition, and finally committed suicide by shooting himself at one of the lonely Siberian settlements on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea.
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