N., he found no land to the north or east, and conceived he had reached the end of the continent.

As a matter of fact, he was within thirty miles of the west coast of America; but of this he does not seem to have been aware, being content with solving the special problem put before him by the Czar.

The strait thus discovered by Behring, though not known by him to be a strait, has ever since been known by his name.
In 1741, however, Behring again set out on a voyage of discovery to ascertain how far to the east America was, and within a fortnight had come within sight of the lofty mountain named by him Mount St.Elias.Behring himself died upon this voyage, on an island also named after him; he had at last solved the relation between the Old and the New Worlds.
These voyages of Behring, however, belong to a much later stage of discovery than those we have hitherto been treating for the last three chapters.

His explorations were undertaken mainly for scientific purposes, and to solve a scientific problem, whereas all the other researches of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch were directed to one end, that of reaching the Spice Islands and Cathay.

The Portuguese at first started out on the search by the slow method of creeping down the coast of Africa; the Spanish, by adopting Columbus's bold idea, had attempted it by the western route, and under Magellan's still bolder conception had equally succeeded in reaching it in that way; the English and French sought for a north-west passage to the Moluccas; while the English and Dutch attempted a northeasterly route.