High Governing Senate and the decision of the Academy of Sciences, you were assigned to the Kamchatka Expedition. By that Academy of Sciences, you were issued instructions signed by Her Imperial Majesty’s Kammerherr1 and president of the Academy of Sciences, Baron von Korff, in which you were ordered to describe all things pertaining to natural history, to assist us in all matters after you arrived here, and to be guided by our determinations in everything. For these reasons we have decided to send you to Okhotsk and to Kamchatka and to issue you these instructions you are to follow unconditionally.
1.From here you will travel with your present party via Irkutsk, Yakutsk, and Okhotsk to Kamchatka and will investigate and describe—en route as well as on Kamchatka—everything concerning natural as well as political history, and in all places where it seems appropriate you will carry out meteorological observations and those concerning the nature of the earth. All this is recorded in our instructions, copies of which were provided to you on your departure from St. Petersburg. You will always act as befits a faithful servant of Her Imperial Majesty.
2.To your party will be assigned the painter Johann Christian Berckhan to draw and paint everything noteworthy in natural and political history; the student Aleksei Gorlanov to assist you with your observations, especially with those concerning geography and political history, and with the correspondence with the government offices; the prospector Grigorei Samoilov to look for ores; the huntsman Dmitrei Giliashev to shoot animals and birds [for the scientific collections]; and the Yakutsk sluzhiv Fedot Klimovskoi to interpret in the Yakut language and communicate with other native peoples and interview them about their faith, customs, and way of life, for which Klimovskoi has the necessary skills, having gained several years’ experience. He is also to pay the progon money [Russian (R), money collected per kilometer traveled].
3.You will receive from the Yeniseysk Provincial Administration the progon money—from here to Irkutsk via Taseevskoi Ostrog, Kanskoi Ostrog, and Udinskoi Ostrog—for eleven podvodi [R, for-hire, government-sponsored wagons with horses or, in winter, sleds pulled by horses or dogs], namely, four podvodi for you, three for the painter, one for the student, one for the prospector and his instruments, one for the huntsman and the Yakutsk sluzhiv, and one for the books, instruments, and materials belonging to the Crown. The Yakutsk sluzhiv Fedot Klimovskoi shall enter the progon money into the Schnurbuch [literally, string book, a ledger with a registered number of pages through which a string has been drawn and its ends sealed, issued by government offices to travelers on official business to record expenses and receipts; WH, Glossar; Quellen 1:331], which the Yeniseysk Provincial Administration will hand over together with the progon money. The book and what is left of the money shall be delivered to the Irkutsk Provincial Administration when you arrive in Irkutsk.
4.You shall make great haste traveling to Irkutsk so that you can still use the winter route. You shall order the student Gorlanov to describe the geography along the route you are traveling.
5.Once you arrive in Irkutsk, you will inform the Irkutsk Provincial Administration in writing about your plans for carrying out the assigned journey and demand assistance in making it all happen. You are going to demand that pay authorized by Her Imperial Majesty be set aside for you and your party up to the beginning of the coming year, 1740. For this year, 1739, you have received your pay until August 8, so you are to receive it for five more months. The other members of your party received only a third of their pay here in Yeniseysk and thus have yet to receive two-thirds in Irkutsk. The prospector Samoilov was allotted a food allowance equal to a soldier’s ration. He received that until March of this year. The huntsman Giliashev and the Yakutsk sluzhiv were each authorized sluzhivs’ rations. But they have not received theirs for this year 1739, so their rations have to be requisitioned in Irkutsk.
6.From the Irkutsk Provincial Administration, you will requisition three Irkutsk sluzhivs as escorts to assist you with the necessary shipments and with everything else necessary for your assigned observations. You will incorporate these sluzhivs into your party. You will also demand that the Irkutsk Provincial Administration issue a ukase in the name of Her Imperial Majesty authorizing the exchange of these sluzhivs in Yakutsk and Okhotsk for sluzhivs from there.
7.To shoot birds and animals, you will be given nine pounds of the Crown’s gunpowder from the amount we received in Irkutsk in 1735. You will demand eighteen pounds of lead from the Irkutsk Provincial Administration since we do not have any to spare. When you leave for Okhotsk, you may add some of both gunpowder and lead from the supply we left in Yakutsk together with other Crown supplies. But you will not hand over all the gunpowder and lead to your huntsman but will give him what he needs in each instance depending on whether he uses the flintlock musket or the rifle, so that the supply is controlled and he does not use gunpowder or lead unnecessarily.
8.You will demand that the Irkutsk Provincial Administration provide information about the provisions they promised to set aside for us and our retinue in Okhotsk, and that the administration order as many of those provisions as needed to be handed over to you and your party. A ukase of Her Imperial Majesty, issued on February 13, 1733, by the High Governing Senate, states that if our and our retinue’s personal supply of provisions somewhere should not be sufficient and there were none to be purchased, then if foodstuffs belonging to the Crown were available from local warehouses, they should, as long as necessary, be issued at cost. Concerning this we have repeatedly written to the High Governing Senate, requesting that the provisions in Okhotsk and Kamchatka be sold to us at cost and the transportation be paid out of Crown funds. Since we were quite confident that a favorable decision would be forthcoming, we demanded that the Irkutsk Provincial Administration see to it that the provisions required by us and our retinue are made ready for us in Okhotsk and sold to us at cost. In case the Irkutsk Provincial Administration has already begun to transport these provisions, you will see to it that everything is carried out carefully and speedily according to the ukases and decrees. In Okhotsk you will then accept as many provisions as needed by you and your party. If, however, the transport of those provisions has not yet occurred, then you must demand that at least as many provisions as needed by you and your party for two and a half years be transported immediately to Okhotsk; the amount is to be calculated so that each person receives 864 pounds per year. You will receive exact copies of the entire correspondence up to now so that you know what exactly we wrote to the Irkutsk Provincial Administration concerning the transport of provisions and what response we received from that administration.
9.In 1737 the student Stepan Krasheninnikov was dispatched by us to Kamchatka to carry out a variety of investigations and to collect all kinds of oddities. On his departure from Yakutsk, he took with him provisions for two years, 1737 and 1738. Last year, in 1738, according to our request and the decision of the Irkutsk Provincial Administration, the student should have been sent provisions for the current year, 1739. Up until your departure for Kamchatka, you are to make sure that he is annually sent the necessary provisions and that provisions for him for two and a half years are added to those required by you and your party. You will especially see to it that this year, 1739, the student Krasheninnikov is sent provisions for the year 1740, since according to a report sent by him from Kamchatka, a significant part of the provisions he took with him was jettisoned during the voyage. To keep you informed to the fullest extent, exact copies of the relevant request submitted to the Irkutsk Provincial Administration and of the ukases sent to Yakutsk and Okhotsk are attached. [According to document 26, following these instructions in Quellen 3:94–95, Steller received a total of 161 sheets of document copies—no wonder he needed an extra podvoda to transport all the papers, books, and materials.]
10. During your stay in Irkutsk, you will take a look at the instruments for meteorological observations that we left behind to see if they are still in good condition. And you will ascertain if the sluzhiv Nikita Kanaev, who was charged with keeping a written record of those observations, is properly fulfilling his duties. In case those instruments have been damaged in some way, you will restore them to their original condition. In case that sluzhiv is negligent in the performance of his duties, you will inform the Irkutsk Provincial Administration and demand that the administration hold him to fulfilling his duties in every respect.
