Chapter III

Discovery of the Behring’s Straits and Alaska and Beginning of the Fur Trade in the Pacific Ocean.

            In 1728, when a century and more had elapsed during which no voyage was attempted in the North Pacific Ocean, Vitus Behring, a Danish navigator of skill and experience, sailing under the Russian flag, began a series of explorations along the east coast of Asia. He found Behring’s Straits and Behring’s Sea, which he named, and then sailed a southeasterly course for many days, reaching latitude 46° without having encountered land. This is the latitude of the Columbia River, but how near the coast of America he approached at that point is not recorded.

            Behring then continued his voyage to the northeast until he had ascended to the sixtieth degree, when he discovered land, the first thing to meet his gaze being a giant snow-crowned peak. This he named Mount St. Elias. His vessel sailed into a passage leading between the mainland and a large island, when Behring discovered that the water was discolored, as though it had been discharged from a large river, the volume indicating the stream to be the water drain of a land of continental proportions. That this continent was America no one on board doubted. The subordinate officers desired to explore the coast southward in the direction of the Spanish colonies, but Behring, who was then in ill health, refused to do so, and started upon the return voyage, which was a series of disasters and indescribable hardships. The explorers spent the winter on Behring’s Isle, where Behring and many of his men died and were buried.

            Accompanying Behring on his last voyage was a German surgeon and scientist named Steller, and his journal, which was not published until 1795, long after the Alaskan coast had been thoroughly explored by Spanish, Russian, English, and American navigators, is the only record preserved of the adventures and terrible sufferings endured by the discoverers of Alaska. The general features of the voyage, however, were well known in Europe soon after its fatal termination. The skins which the survivors wore when they returned were found to be exceedingly valuable,-probably seal, Alaska sable, and sea otter,-and several private expeditions were fitted out by Russian traders to visit the islands lying to the eastward in search of furs. In this way the fur trade of the Pacific began, and before the Russian government was prepared for another expedition this trade had reached considerable proportions.

            The increasing value of the fur business led the Russian government to dispatch other exploring expeditions in 1766 and 1769. They found the coast, wherever they reached the mainland at all, fringed with islands, and the sea through which they passed dotted with them. That the land on the east side of Behring’s Straits was of considerable proportions was evident. This they called “Alaska,” or “Aliaska,” and supposed it to be a large island. In 1744 a map was prepared representing Russian ideas of the geography of Russian America. Upon this the coast of America was represented as running northwesterly from California to the seventieth degree of latitude, which was its extreme northern and western limit. Lying between America and Asia in that latitude was a vast sea of islands, of which the largest was Alaska, with only the channel of Behring’s Straits separating it from the coast of Asia.

            It remained for an Englishman, the celebrated Captain Cook, only a few years later to reveal to them their error. He commanded the first English vessel to visit the North Pacific, and in one voyage straightened out the geographical tangle the Russians had made in Alaska, and reformed the ideas the Spaniards entertained about the coast they had several times explored farther to the south.

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