INTRODUCTION. 19 



were current among the hunters and natives, partly for extend- 

 ing the territory yielding tribute to the Russians, over the yet 

 unknown regions in the north-east. 



Deschnev started on the 1st July, 1648, from the Kolyma in 

 command of one of the seven vessels {Kotscher)} manned with 

 thirty men, of which the expedition consisted. Concerning the 

 fate of four of these vessels we have no information. It is 

 probable that they turned back, and were not lost, as several 

 writers have supposed ; three, under the command of the 

 Cossacks, Deschnev and Ankudinov, and the fur-hunter, Kolmo- 

 gorsov, succeeding in reaching Chutskojnos through what appears 

 to have been open water. Here Ankudinov's vessel was ship- 

 Avrecked ; the men, however, were saved and divided among 

 the other two, which were speedily separated. Deschnev con- 

 tinued his voyage along the east coast of Kamschatka to the 

 Anadir, which was reached in October. Ankudinov is also 

 supposed to have reached the mouth of the Kamschatka River, 

 where he settled among the natives and finally died of scurvy. 



The year following (1649) Staduchin sailed again, for seven 

 days, eastward from the Kolyma to the neighbourhood of 

 Chutskojnos, in an open sea, so far as we can gather from the 

 defective account. Deschnev's own opinion of the possibility 

 of navigating this sea may be seen from the fact, that, after 

 his own vessel was lost, he had timber collected at the Anadir 

 for the purpose of building new ones. With these he intended 

 to send to Yakoutsk the tribute of furs which he had received 

 from the natives. He was, however, obliged to desist from his 

 project by an easily understood want of materials for the build- 

 ing of the new vessels ; he remarks also in connection with this 

 that the sea round Chutskojnos is not free of ice every year. 



A number of voyages from the Siberian rivers northward, were 

 also made after the founding of Nischni Kolymsk, by Michael 

 Staduschin in 1644, in consequence of the reports which were 

 current among the natives at the coast, of the existence of large 

 inhabited islands, rich in walrus tusks and mammoth bones, 

 in the Siberian Polar Sea. Often disputed, but persistently taken 

 up by the hunting races, these reports have finally been verified 

 by the discovery of the islands of New Siberia, of Wrangel's 

 Land, and of the part of North America east of Behring's Straits, 

 whose natural state gave occasion to the golden glamour of 

 tradition with which the belief of the common people in- 

 currertly adorned the bleak, treeless islands in the Polar Sea. 



All these attempts to force a passage in the open sea from the 

 Siberian coasts northwards, failed, for the single reason, that an 



^ Pretty broad, flat-bottomed, keelless vessels, 12 fathoms lonj?, gene- 

 rall moved forward by rowing : sail only used with fair wiiid {Wrangels 

 Beite, p. 4). 



c 2 



