and other household items, the shamans, healing practices, and other remarkable things that should be represented in drawings. You will make an effort to do likewise with the Tungus on the Lena, especially in Yakutsk. You will order drawings made of any and all Tungus and Yakut dress, shamans, and sacrifices since up to now nothing about the Yakuts has been depicted in drawings.
19. After your arrival in Yakutsk, you will write to Captain Commander Bering and to the Okhotsk administration to demand information on when a seagoing vessel can be expected to depart from Okhotsk for Kamchatka. In the meantime you will promptly let the Yakutsk voevod know what you require for your impending journey so that, when the news arrives from Okhotsk that a seagoing vessel will depart from Okhotsk for Kamchatka in the summer or fall of 1740 and there will be no obstacles to transporting the provisions needed by you and your party, you will finally be able to travel to Okhotsk in the spring of the year 1740 and cross over to Kamchatka in the same year.
20. However, if against expectations you receive the news that no vessel will leave Okhotsk for Kamchatka in 1740 or that there are no provisions because none were delivered, you will, in the spring of 1740, travel to the lower Lena, either as far as the mouth of the Lena or only so far that you will be able to return to Yakutsk by fall of that year so that you will not have to spend the winter in those areas downriver, enduring much hardship. You will describe the areas through which you travel on the river in great detail and will compile a geographic list describing the banks, along with the ores and minerals found on them; the trees, plants, animals, and other things; and the peoples living there. You will make an effort to obtain a living Arctic fox [Vulpes lagopus] and a living small field mouse that Arctic foxes feed on and have them sketched. You will make an especially great effort to visit two or three places where either rotten or well-preserved mammoth bones are found in the ground. You will issue orders to dig for those from the top down so that no bones are moved out of place. You will describe the various sand, stone, and clay strata located above these bones, and you will indicate the depth of these strata and sequence in which these strata lie one on top of the other and whether they are horizontal, vertical, or slanted, and if slanted, their approximate angle and to which side they incline from top to bottom. When the soil above the bones has been completely removed so all the bones are visible, you are to describe, in detail, their position in the ground. At one of these places, you are to order the painter to make an exact drawing of the position of those bones. If you manage to gather a complete skeleton, you will take it with you to Yakutsk and ship it to St. Petersburg to be preserved in Her Imperial Majesty’s Kunstkammer.3 But if a lot of the bones necessary for a complete skeleton cannot be found, you will collect only the most notable and ship them to St. Petersburg. After these bones have been removed from the ground, you will describe the soil in which they were lying and dig up as much of the soil from the place underneath as you can without too much difficulty and describe that, too.
21. According to information sent to us by Professor de l’Isle de la Croyère, all kinds of investigations were conducted by him in the regions along the lower Lena. A student was sent by him to the mouth of both the Lena and the Olenek River, where he was ordered to collect all the curiosities found there and to bring them with him to Yakutsk. So that you may know ahead of time where you should concentrate your efforts, you will ask the professor for copies of the written information generated by him concerning the natural and political history, and you will look at the curiosities the student brought back. If among them you find some particularly unusual objects, you will select these and ask Professor la Croyère [sic] to have them shipped to St. Petersburg.
22. To complement information we had received before our stay in Yakutsk, we demanded that the Yakutsk voevod’s office provide us with more details about the geography and history of the Yakutsk district. We also requested that various Yakut clothing items be purchased for Her Imperial Majesty’s Kunstkammer, a request that was given added weight by a ukase from the Irkutsk Provincial Administration. To date we have, however, not received either news or articles of clothing from Yakutsk. You will therefore repeat our earlier demands to the Yakutsk administration and report to us what was done.
23. In accordance with Her Imperial Majesty’s ukase issued on June 19, 1732, by the High Governing Senate to the Academy of Sciences, it was ordered that the assay master Gardebol be assigned to our retinue. According to a letter Captain Commander Bering sent us on June 18 [actually January 18; WH, Anm. 35] of last year, 1738, Gardebol was apparently assigned in the summer of 1738 to accompany Captain Spangberg on a sea voyage. During your stay in Yakutsk, you will request Her Imperial Majesty’s pay for Gardebol. In the letter mentioned above, the captain commander informed us that the pay for Gardebol had been requested from the Yakutsk voevod’s office to the end of 1738, and that he was not obligated to further request pay for Gardebol since he had been assigned to our command. We replied to the captain commander that we would tend to Gardebol’s pay but would not be able to do anything just then since we were too far away. For this reason you will inquire of the Yakutsk voevod’s office for which years they had requested the pay for Gardebol and had paid him, and for which years, beginning with 1739, the captain commander did not request pay for Gardebol. You will request pay for Gardebol up to the year in which you depart from Okhotsk, and you will also take care of it until he is under your command.
24. We left some books and Crown materials in Yakutsk and charged the surveyor Krasil’nikov with looking after them. You will need some of those for your assignments. You have permission to use whichever ones you deem necessary but need to provide a receipt for them. You are being given an exact copy of the list of items in Krasil’nikov’s care.
25. We left a variety of mining tools in Yakutsk entrusted to the Yakutsk voevod’s office—for example, a large rock drill, a small rock drill, threaded shafts, hammers, mattocks, pick axes, shovels, hoes, drills, and other stuff, as well as a 360-pound supply of iron rods. Petr Bobrov, storehouse manager of the Yakutsk voevod’s office, gave us a receipt for these tools and the iron. You may take whichever of these tools you deem necessary. A list of these tools is appended to these instructions.
26. To transport the papers and books from Yakutsk to Okhotsk, you may take some of the Crown crates mentioned above in which the Crown things are stored. In case you need leather saddlebags tanned white to transport any kind of Crown things, you may demand those from whoever is in charge of them with the Kamchatka Expedition since—according to a letter written on April 10, 1735, and sent us by Captain Commander Bering—two hundred pairs of saddlebags were set aside for our retinue. When he left Yakutsk for Okhotsk, the student Krasheninnikov received twelve pairs of these for transporting his provisions.
27. When everything required for your journey to Okhotsk and Kamchatka has been prepared and you have received the news from Okhotsk that a sufficient supply of provisions has been transported to Okhotsk and that a seagoing vessel will be departing Okhotsk for Kamchatka, then you will, at the first opportunity, travel to Okhotsk with your party in the spring of the year in which the boat is leaving for Kamchatka. You will receive four horses for each podvoda for that journey in accordance with Her Imperial Majesty’s Geleitukase given us by the Siberian Government Administration, of which a copy has been made in the Yakutsk voevod’s office. Since this journey will take a long time, you will have the opportunity to diligently investigate everything concerning the geography, natural history, and political history of that region.
28. Until you can depart for Kamchatka, you will remain in Okhotsk. In the meantime you will devote your diligence to describing the natural history of the local area, especially the plants and trees, birds, animals, fishes, whales, all kinds of insects, shellfish, and crabs. This includes comparing the marine plants, birds, animals, fishes, insects, shellfish, and crabs to those plants, birds, and other creatures found in the rivers and on land, as well as to those living in both the sea and the rivers. As for the fish swimming from the sea into the rivers, you will describe precisely when they do so and how far up the rivers they go and at what time they return to the sea. You will describe which birds stay all year in the area around Okhotsk and which ones only temporarily, including which countries the latter come from and when and to which countries they return.
