XIII.] ANDKEJEV. 551 



indicated that shipwrecked men had wintered there, and Wrangel 

 accordingly supposes that it was there that Schalaurov perished 

 a sacrifice to the determination with which he prosecuted his 

 self-imposed task of saihug round the nortli-eastern promontory 

 of Asia.i 



In order to ascertain whether any truth lay at the bottom 

 of the view, generally adopted in Siberia, that the continent of 

 America extended along the north coast of Asia to the neigh- 

 bourhood of the islands situated there, Chicherin, Governor of 

 Siberia, in the winter of 1763 sent a sergeant, Andrejev with 

 dog-sledges on an ice journey towards the north. He succeeded 

 in reaching some islands of considerable extent, which Wrangel, 

 who always shows himself very sceptical with respect to the 

 existence of new lands and islands in the Polar Sea, considers to 

 have been the Bear Islands. Now it appears to be jDretty certain 

 that Andrejev visited a south-westerly continuation of the land 

 named on recent maps " Wrangel Land," which in that case, like 

 the corresponding part of America, forms a collection of many 

 large and small islands. Andrejev found everywhere numerous 

 proofs that the islands which he visited had been formerly 

 inhabited. Among other things he saw a large hut built of 

 wood without the help of iron tools. The logs were as it were 

 gnawed with teeth (hewed with stone axes), and bound together 

 with thongs.^ Its position and construction indicated that the 

 house had been built for defence ; it had thus been found im- 

 possible in the desolate regions of the Polar Sea to avoid the 

 discord and the strife which prevail in more southerly lands. 

 To the east and north-east Andrejev thought he saw a distant 

 land ; he is also clearly the true European discoverer of Wrangel 

 Land, provided we do not consider that even he had a pre- 

 decessor in the Cossack, Feodor Tatarinov, who according to 

 the concluding words of Andrejev' s journal appears to have 

 previously visited the same islands. It is highl}^ desirable that 

 this journal, if still in existence, be published in a completely 

 unaltered form. How important this is appears from the fol- 

 lowing paragraph in the instructions given to Billings : — " One 

 Sergeant Andrejev saw from the last of the Bear Islands a large 

 island to which they (Andrejev and his companions) travelled in 

 dog-sledges. But they turned when they had gone twenty 

 versts from the coast, because they saw fresh traces of a large 



1 An account of Sclialaurov is j^iven by Coxe {Russian Discoveries, &c., 

 1780, p. 323) and Wrangel (i. p. 73). That the hut seen by Matiuschkin 

 actually belonged to Schalaurov appears to me In'ghly improbable, for 

 the traditions of the Siberian savages seldom extend sixty years back. 



^ Wrangel, i. p. 79. 



