When Atlassof, in 1697, took the first steps in the conquest of Kamchatka the Russians were already known to the inhabitants. Long before him Fedotof and a few comrades had made their way into the country and intermarried with native women. They had been held in great honour and almost deified as being evidently of a superior race. For some time it was supposed that no human hand could hurt them, but this belief was rudely shattered when two of the demigods quarrelled and fought, and one wounding the other, the blood flowed. That flow of blood was fatal, for the natives, judging that they were but ordinary flesh, took an early opportunity of wiping them out, the name of their leader being still traceable in that of the Fedotcha River on the banks of which they had lived.
The Kamchadales had other tales to tell of visitors from the east and south, and Atlassof himself discovered on the River Itcha a Japanese who had been wrecked on the coast two years before, from whom he learnt of islands innumerable. But there were no ships on the Pacific coast of Siberia, and nothing in the way of discovery could be done until 1714, when there arrived at Ochotsk a detachment of sailors and shipwrights despatched thither overland. According to one of the sailors, Henry Bush, a Dutchman, the carpenters built a good durable vessel some fifty feet long which was ready for sea in 1716 when the first voyage was undertaken. The coast of Kamchatka was made near the River Itcha, and sailing south they reached the Kompakova, where they wintered and found the whale that had in its body the harpoon of European workmanship marked with Roman letters, mentioned by Scoresby. Bush returned to Ochotsk in July, to be sent in the following year to discover the Shantar Islands, and next year, 1718, the Kuriles; thus venturing into the Pacific beyond Cape Lopatka.
The last of these expeditions was due to the direct order of Peter the Great, who, knowing nothing of Deschnef, and finding the sea open to the north, resolved on a voyage in that direction, his holograph instructions to Admiral Apraxin being: "One or two boats with decks to be built at Kamchatka, or at any other convenient place, with which inquiry should be made relative to the northerly coasts, to see whether they are not contiguous with America, since their termination is not yet known." Peter died, and the Empress Catherine, carrying out these instructions in their fullest meaning, began her reign with an order for the expedition.