RUSSIAN EXPLORATIONS. LESHNEFF. 57 



rivers, with the double view of exploration and of sub- 

 jecting the natives to Russian authority. The Lena, 

 lana, Indigirka, Alaseia, and Kolyma, were discovered 

 before 1640, by parties sent under Cossack leaders to 

 collect tribute, who at the same time fell in with the 

 Tchuktches, and heard their reports of islands lying 

 off the coast. The earliest attempt to sail to eastward 

 of the Kolyma was made in 1646, and repeated in the 

 two following years, with several small vessels, all of 

 which were wrecked, except one commanded by Desh- 

 neff, a government functionary, whose name stands high 

 among the early explorers. His grand object was to 

 get round to the mouth of the Anadyr, on the eastern 

 coast, to trade for sable-skins ; and the summer of 1648 

 proving favorable to navigation among the ice, he sailed 

 along the shore, and through the strait explored by 

 Behring nearly a century later, and founded a settle- 

 ment at the place to which he was bound the Anadyr 

 river. This is the only occasion on which such a voyage 

 has been made ; and to Deshneff and his companions 

 belongs the honor of having been the first and sole 

 navigators from the Arctic Sea to the Pacific, and of 

 having proved, at a period much earlier than is com- 

 monly supposed, that the American and Asiatic conti- 

 nents are not united. 



Other expeditions followed ; the Bear Islands were 

 seen ; and, to obtain accurate particulars concerning 

 them, the government of Siberia sent out two parties, in 

 1711, who crossed the ice to the Likahoff Islands, and 

 saw others yet further to the north. On their return to 

 the mainland, the leaders were murdered by the crews, 

 who feared the hardships of further explorations. Thus 

 the work went on with var} 7 ing fortune, the positions 

 mostly ill-defined, as must be the case in the absence of 

 accurate instruments, until 1734, the reign of the 



