The Great Alone [antikvár]

IntroductionWhile America was being settled by westward expansion, Russia was expanding its territory by moving east. Throughout its early history, the one commodity Russia had in abundance to trade to both Europe and China was furs - sable, ermine, fox, bear, and other valuable pelts. Everything was computed in ^rs; taxes, salaries, penalties, and rewards were paid in furs.It was the promyshlenik - or promyshleniki in the plural - a breed of coureurs des bois comparable to American mountain men, who exploited this natural resource. While serfdom prevailed in the rest of the country, forcing people to work the land for the nobles, these men were free to go where they pleased, traveling in bands, electing their own leaders, and sharing the profits from a season's hunt among themselves and the merchants financing the expeditions. When they had hunted out a fur grounds, they moved to a new area - ultimately confronting the vast wilderness of fur-rich Siberia.The promyshleniki scouted, and the Cossacks followed to claim. A warlike people from the steppes above the Black Sea, they were a social rather than an ethnic class who robbed as frequently as they traded, and prized their freedom highly. They had reached the Pacific in the 17th century and heard rumors of a "great land" across the waters to the east. At the same time, European scientists were speculating that Asia and America were connected at some northern point.It was Peter the Great who ordered the first expedition to explore the uncharted North Pacific and Arctic Oceans and to ascertain whether the two continents were joined. In July of 1728, Vitus Bering, a Dane serving in the Russian navy, sailed the newly built packet boat St. Gabriel from the shipyard he'd constructed near the mouth of the Kamchatka River onto the sea that would bear his name. Two short months later he returned.