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.
29. After you arrive in Okhotsk, you will demand that the administration of Okhotsk order the Koryaks to hunt a whale and bring it to Okhotsk. It is also possible that during your stay in Okhotsk a whale will be beached on the shore. You will describe such a whale and find out if there are other species of whales in that sea. You will dissect that whale and specifically describe it according to the special instructions given you as part of these.
30. You will also endeavor to find out if the medication called spermaceti may be extracted from that whale’s brain. The abovementioned special instructions describe how this medication is extracted from Greenland whales. If this medication can be prepared, you will send us a certain amount of it. You will, together with the medication, send us half a pound of a fresh whale brain in a glass or pot, securely caulked and with seal affixed, so that we can find out for certain ourselves by conducting our own experiment.
31. After you arrive in Okhotsk, you will—according to point 23 of these instructions—accept the assay master Gardebol into your party and demand that he provide you reports. You will order him to describe in detail what his investigations during his stay in Okhotsk consisted of, what he did on the sea voyage with Captain Spangberg, which places he explored, and what resulted from those explorations. As long as he belongs to your party, you will assign tasks to Gardebol and demand that he carry out investigations in line with his reports.
32. While you are in Okhotsk, you will find out everything about the religious beliefs of the local Lamut and Koryak peoples; about their customs, their way of life, their hunting and fishing practices; and about their weddings, burials, birth and rearing of children, oaths and vows, dispositions, virtues and vices, and anything else concerning them. If there happen to be any Tungus from Udskoi Ostrog in Okhotsk, you will find out from them whatever you can about the Gilyaks living around the mouth of the Amur River.
33. While in Okhotsk you will find out to the best of your ability the rivers and streams south and north of the Okhota River that flow into the Sea of Okhotsk, describing the width, depth, and flow rate of each, as well as the condition of their banks, the trees and brush, and the animals and birds found along their banks and the fish in their waters.
34. For the above-outlined investigations to be carried out in Okhotsk, you will, after your arrival, demand interpreters of the Lamut and Koryak languages from the administration of Okhotsk as well as a huntsman from among the local sluzhivs. When you leave Okhotsk, you will return all of them to that administration.
35. To provide you ahead of time with pertinent information about all kinds of animals, birds, fish, plants, and trees found in the Okhotsk region, you will receive exact copies of the lists the student Stepan Krasheninnikov made of the animals, birds, trees, and plants there, as well as of the descriptions Krasheninnikov made of some fish, birds, and sponges. Odds and ends of information concerning the natural history along the route from Yakutsk to Okhotsk have also been added.
36. If a seagoing vessel should depart for Kamchatka, stop your investigations in Okhotsk, leaving any unfinished ones behind for when you return from Kamchatka. Together with your party, take that ship to Kamchatka and go to Bol’sheretskoi Ostrog, where we sent the student Stepan Krasheninnikov and ordered him to stay.
37. After you arrive in Bol’sheretskoi Ostrog, you will take the student Krasheninnikov into your command and look over all the observations and investigations he has conducted since arriving in Kamchatka. Following our written directives, you will then correct any of his observations you consider questionable so no uncertainty remains.