XIII.] DESCHNEY'S VOYAGES 523 



others, on the contrary, made a highly remarkable journey. 

 The commanders of them were the Cossacks, Gerasim 

 Ankudinov and Simeon Deschnev, and the hunter Feodot 

 Alexejev. Deschnev entertained such hopes of success that 

 before his departure he promised to collect a tribute of seven 

 times forty sable skins. The Siberian archives, according to 

 Mtiller, contain the following details.^ 



On IJth June, 1648, a start was made from the Kolyma. The 

 sea was open ; at least the boats came without any adventure 

 which Deschnev thought worth the trouble of noting in his 

 narrative to Great Chukotskojnos. Of this cape Deschnev 

 says that it is quite different from the cape at the river 

 Chukotskaja. For it lies between north and north-east, and 

 bends with a rounding towards the Anadyr. On the Russian 

 side a rivulet runs into the sea, at which the Chukches had 

 raised a heap of whales' bones. Right off the cape lie two 

 islands, on which people of Chukch race with perforated lips 

 Avere seen. From this cape it is possible with a favourable 

 wind to sail to the Anadyr in three days, and the way is not 

 longer by land, because the Anadyr falls into a gulf of the 

 sea. At Chukotskojnos or, according to Wrangel at a "holy 

 promontory," Svjatoinos (Serdze Kamen?) previously reached, 

 Ankudinov' s craft was shipwrecked. The crew were saved, 

 and distributed on Deschnev's and Alexejev's boats. On the 

 'f^th. September the Russians had a fight with the Chukches 

 living on the coast, in which fight Alexejev was wounded. 

 Soon after Deschnev's and Alexejev's " kotsches " were parted 

 never to meet again. 



Deschnev was driven about by storms and head-winds until 

 past the beginning of October. Finally his vessel stranded near 

 the mouth of the river Olutorsk, in 61° N.L, Hence he marched 

 with his twenty-five men to the Anadyr. He had expected 

 to meet with some natives in its lower course, but the region 

 was uninhabited, which caused the invaders much trouble, 

 because they suffered from want of provisions. Although 



^ G.P. MiiWev, Sa7n77ilunff Russischer Geschichfe, St.Petersburc:, 1758. Miiller 

 asserts in tliis work that it was he who, in 1736, first drew from the repositories 

 of the Yakutsk archives tlie account of Deschnev's voyage, which before 

 that time was known neither at the court of the Czar nor in the remotest 

 parts of Siberia. Tliis, however, is not quite correct, for long before 

 .Miiiier, tlie Swedish prisoner-of-war, Strahlenberg, knew that tlie Eussians 

 travelled by sea from the Kolyma to Kamchatka, which appears from hig 

 map of Asia, constructed during his stay in Siberia, and published in Das 

 Nord- unci OstUche The'd von Europa und Asia, Stockholm, 1730. On this 

 map there is the following inscription in the sea north of the Kolyma : — 

 "Hie Kutheni ab initio per" Moles glaciales, quae flante Borea ad Littora, 

 flantecjue Austro versus Mare iterum pulsantur, magno Lahore et Vita? 

 Discrimine transvecti sunt ad Kegionem Kamtszatkam." 



