XIII.] SPANGBERG'S VOYAGE TO JAPAN. 549 



by no means corresponded with tlie maps of Asia constructed 

 by the men who were at that time leaders of the Petersburg 

 Academy. Spangberg therefore during his return journey through 

 Siberia got orders to travel again to the same regions in order 

 to settle the doubts that had arisen. A new vessel had to 

 be built, and with this he started in 1741 from Okotsk to 

 his former winter haven in Kamchatka. Hence he sailed in 

 1742 in a southerly direction, but he had scarcely passed the 

 first of the Kurile Islands when the vessel became so leaky 

 that he was compelled to turn. The second expedition of 

 Spangberg to Japan was thus completely without result, a 

 circumstance evidently brought about by the unjustified and 

 (ififensive doubts which led to it, and the arbitrary way in 

 which it was arranged at St. Petersburg. 



8. Journeys in the interior of Siberia by Graelin, Midler, 

 Steller, Krascheninnikov, de I'lsle de la Croyere, &c. — The 

 voyages of these savants have indeed formed an epoch in our 

 knowledge of the ethnograj)hy and natural history of North Asia, 

 but the north coast itself they did not touch. An account of 

 them therefore lies beyond the limits of the history which I 

 have undertaken to relate here. 



The Great Northern Exi^edition by these journeys both by 

 sea and land had gained a knowledge of the natural conditions 

 of North Asia based on actual researches, had yielded jDretty 

 complete information regarding the boundary of that quarter 

 of the globe towards the north, and of the relative i^osition 

 of the east coast of Asia and the west coast of America, had 

 discovered the Aleutian Islands, and had connected the Russian 

 discoveries in the east with those of the West-Europeans in 

 JajDan and China.^ The results were thus very grand and 

 epoch-making. But these undertakings had also required very 

 considerable sacrifices, and long before they were finished the}^ 

 were looked upon in no favourable light by the Siberian 

 authorities, on account of the heavy burden which the transport 

 of provisions and other equipment through desolate regions 

 imposed upon the country. Nearly twenty years now elapsed 

 before there was a new exploratory expedition in the Siberian 

 Polar Sea worthy of being registered in the history of geography 

 This time it was a private jDcrson, a Yakutsk merchant, 

 SCHALAUROV, who proposed to repeat Deschnev's famous voyage 

 and to gain this end sacrificed the whole of his means and 



^ It deserves to be noted as a literary curiosity tliat the famous Frencli 

 savant and geographer, Vivien de Saint Martin, in his work, Histoire de la 

 Gtiof/rajMe et des Derouvertc.H geographiques, Paris, 1873, does not say a single 

 word regarding all those expeditions which form an epoch in our knowledge 

 of the Old World. 



