4 KNOWLEDGE OF NORTH PACIFIC 



knew that one could go by water from the mouth of the Ob to 

 the mouth of the Lena, from the mouth of the Amur to the 

 mouth of the Okhota, but they did not know whether one could 

 navigate from the mouth of the Lena to the mouth of the 

 Okhota. They were not agreed among themselves whether 

 there was land to the north and east of the two last-named rivers. 

 Many of these Siberian hunters believed that not far from the 

 mouth of the Kolyma River a large continent (bolshaya zemlya) 

 extended northward and that the Asiatic mainland stretched out 

 indefinitely to the eastward. Something was also said and known 

 of the Anadyr and Kamchatka Rivers, but they were supposed to 

 discharge their waters into the Arctic. According to some 

 curious Siberian maps of the late seventeenth and early eight- 

 eenth centuries eastern Asia ended somewhere near the mouth 

 of the Okhota River and northern Asia close to the Yana 

 River, and the two parts together, where they joined, formed a 

 right angle. The areas which now go by the name of Kamchatka 

 and the Chukchi Peninsula were then unnoticed. This may have 

 been due to the Siberians' ignorance of the country or to their 

 ignorance of the science of map making. 



Peter the Great's Interest 



When Peter the Great came into power he took deep interest 

 in the activities of his energetic Cossacks and tried to give them 

 intelligent guidance. He sent many of his Swedish prisoners of 

 war into Siberian ports to teach his subjects to build sea-going 

 vessels, to use nautical instruments, and to construct modern 

 maps. Between 1700 and 1715 Kamchatka and the Kurile 

 Islands were discovered and explored, and the terra incognita in 

 Asia was pushed still farther eastward. Reports of these dis- 

 coveries reached the scientific men of Western Europe, and when 

 Peter came among them in 17 16 and 17 17 they discussed with 

 him the question of the North Pacific and urged him to settle 

 once for all the problem whether Asia and America were united. 

 Peter accepted for himself and for his country the honor and the 



