510 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



several races, formerly savage and warlike, who have been 

 driven by foreign invaders from south to north, where they have 

 adopted a common language, and on whom the food-conditions 

 of the shore of the Polar Sea, the cold, snow, and darkness of 

 the Arctic night, the pure, light atmosphere of the Polar 

 summer, have impressed their ineffaceable stamp, a stamp which 

 meets us with little variation, not only among the people now 

 in question, but also — with the necessary allowance for the 

 changes, not always favourable, caused by constant intercourse 

 with Europeans — among the Lapps of Scandinavia and the 

 Samoyeds of Russia. 



It would be of great psychological interest to ascertain 

 whether the change which has taken place in a peaceful 

 direction is progress or decadence. Notwithstanding all the 

 interest which the honesty, peaceableness, and innocent friend- 

 liness of the Polar tribes have for us, it is my belief that the 

 answer must be — decadence. For it strikes us as if we witness 

 here the conversion of a savage, coarse, and cruel man into a 

 being, nobler, indeed, but one in whom just those qualities 

 which distinguish man from the animals, and to which at once 

 the great deeds and the crimes of humanity have been due, 

 have been more and more effaced, and who, if special protection 

 or specially favourable circumstances be absent, will not be able 

 to maintain the struggle for existence with new races that may 

 seek to force their way into the country. 



CHAPTER XIIT. 



The development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia — Hero- 

 dotus^Strabo — Plinj'- — Marco Polo — Herberstein's map — The conquest 

 of Siberia by the Russians — Deschnev's voyages — Coast navigation 

 between the Lena and the Kolyma — Accounts of islands in the Polar 

 Sea and old voyages to them — The discovery of Kamchatka — The 

 navigation of the Sea of Okotsk is opened by Swedish prisoners-of- 

 war — The Great Northern Expedition — Behring — Schalaurov — Andre- 

 yev's Land — The New Siberian islands — Hedenstrom's expeditions — 

 Anjou and Wrangel — Voyages from Behriug's Straits westward — 

 Fictitious Polar voyages. 



jSFow that the north-eastern promontory of Asia has been at last 

 circumnavigated, and vessels have thus sailed along all the 

 coasts of the old world, I shall, before proceeding farther in my 

 sketch of the voyage of the Vega, give a short account of the 

 development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia, 



Already in primitive times the Greeks assumed that all the 



