XIII.] 



MAP OF ASIA: 



533 



instance that Asia stretched with a cape as far as to the 

 neighbourhood of the Pole, or that a broad isthmus between the 

 Pjiisina and the Olenek connected the known portion of this 

 quarter of the world with an Asiatic Polar continent. Nor had 

 geographers a single actual determination of position or 

 geographical measurement from the whole of the immense 

 stretch between the mouth of the Ob and Japan, and there was 

 complete uncertainty as to the relative position of the eastern- 

 most possessions of the Russians on the one side and of Japan 



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ieIri } '•'"''''oAa MIORE : INDllSKOiE 



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MAP OF ASIA. 



From an Atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1737. 



on the other.^ It was difficult to get the maps of the Russians 

 to correspond with those of the Portuguese and the Dutch, at 

 the point where the discoveries of the different nations touched 

 each other ; which also was exceedingly natural, as at that time 

 too limited an extent east and west by 1700 kilometres was 

 commonly assigned to Siberia. In order to investigate this 

 point, in order to fill up the great blank which still existed in 



1 The first astronomical determinations of position in Siberia were, per- 

 liaps, made by Swediali prisoners of war ; the first in China by Jesuits 

 (Cf. Strahlenhtrg, p. 14). 



