1.] GREGORY ISTOMA'S VOYAGE. 45 



before Othere found a successor h\ Sir Hugh Willoughby ; and it 

 is u'sual to pass by the former, -Jt^id to ascribe to the latter the 

 honour of being the first in that* long succession of men who 

 endeavoured to force a passage by the north-east from the 

 Atlantic Ocean to China. 



Here however it ought to be remarked that while such maps 

 as those of Ziegler were published in western Europe, other and 

 better knowledge of the regions in question prevailed in the north. 

 For it may be considered certain that JSIorwegians, Russians 

 and Karelians often travelled in boats on peaceful or warlike 

 errands, during the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth 

 century, from the west coast of Norway to the White Sea, and 

 in the opposite direction, although we find nothing on record 

 regarding such journeys except the account that SiGlSMUND VON 

 Herberstein 1 gives, in his famous book on Eussia, of the 

 voyage of Gregory Istoma and the envoy David from the 

 White Sea to Trondhjem in the year 1496. 



The voyage is inserted under the distinctive title Navigatio 

 per Mare Glaciale^^ and the narrative begins with an explanation 

 that Herbertstein got it from Istoma himself, who, when a youth, 

 had learned Latin in Denmark. As the reasons for choosing the 

 unusual, long, " but safe " circuitous route over the North Sea in 

 preference to the shorter way that was usually taken, Istoma 

 gives the disputes between Sweden and Russia, and the revolt 

 of Sweden against Denmark, at the time when the voyage was 

 undertaken (1496). After giving an account of his journey 

 from Moscow to the mouth of the Dwina, he continues thus : — 



" After having gone on board of four boats, they kept first 

 along the right bank of the ocean, where they saw very high 



^ The first edition, entitled Rcrum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, &c., 

 Vienna, 1549, has three plates, and a map of great value for the former 

 geography of Russia. It is, however, to judge by the copy in the Royal 

 Library at Stockholm, partly drawn by hand, and much inferior to the 

 map in the Italian edition of the following year {Comentari della 3foscovia 

 et parimenfe deUa Russia, &c., per il Signor Sigisviondo libera Barone in 

 Herbetsfaiii, Nelperg aivd Guetnhag, tradotti nuaomente di Latino in lingua 

 nostra volgare Italiana, Venetia, 1550, with two plates and a map, with the 

 inscription " per Giacomo Gastaldo cosmographo in Venetia, MDL "). Von 

 Herbertstein visited Russia as ambassador from the Roman Emperor on 

 two occasions, the first time in 1517, the second in 1525, and on the ground 

 of these two journeys published a sketch of the country, by which it 

 first became known to West-Europeans, and even for Russians themselves 

 it forms an important original source of information regarding the state 

 of civilisation of tlie empire of the__Czar in former times. Von Adelung 

 enumerates in Kritisch-literarische IJbcrsicht der Reisenden in Russland> bis 

 1700, St. Petersburg and Leipzig, 1846, eleven Latin, two Italian, nine 

 German, and one Bohemian translation of this Avork. An English trans- 

 lation has since been published by the Hakluyt Society. 



2 Von Herbertstein, first edition, leaf xxviii., in the second of the three 

 separately-paged portions of the work. 



