PREFACE 



The discovery of the northwest coast of America by the Rus- 

 sians deserves far more consideration than it has yet received. 

 Our information on the subject is very fragmentary — a chapter 

 here and a chapter there in the histories of the Russian Far East 

 and the American Far West. This neglect is due not so much to 

 lack of interest as to lack of material and to the peculiar problems 

 which the handling of the material presents. But these difficul- 

 ties are gradually disappearing, and it is now possible to under- 

 take a task that twenty years ago seemed out of the question. In 

 this work the author has made the actors tell their own story of 

 the discovery of the northwest coast of America. It would have 

 been worth while to bring together all the interesting material 

 relating to the subsidiary voyages of Bering's second expedition 

 — the voyages of Spanberg to Japan and the explorations along 

 the Arctic coast — but neither time nor space permitted it. 



Volume I includes an account of the log books and reports of 

 the navigators, and Volume 2 deals with the journal of Steller, 

 which throws much light on the second expedition and furnishes 

 valuable scientific data. In the translation the terminology of the 

 navigators has been retained and their ideas faithfully rendered 

 in so far as it was possible, considering that their penmanship 

 was not always legible, nor their language grammatical, nor their 

 expressions intelligible. With these original data before him the 

 reader is in a position to form an independent conclusion respect- 

 ing the controversies raging around this voyage. This book is not 

 the last word on the subject, and it is hoped that other investi- 

 gators will use its material to make further studies in the field. 



The late Captain E. P. Bertholf, until within two years of 

 his death in 1921 Commandant of the U. S. Coast Guard, and 

 an authority on the waters and shores of Bering Sea and the 

 North Pacific Ocean, has made a distinct contribution to science 

 by plotting out scientifically the tracks and landfalls of the 



