236 HISTORY OF KAMSCHATKA. [chap. 



trader, seem to rest upon something more than mere tradition. 

 This individual is said to have sailed down the Bova Eiver to the 

 Polar Sea, and to have made his way thence by way of Bering's 

 Straits to Kamschatka. Here he wintered, and in the following 

 summer rounded the southern point of the peninsula, and entered 

 the Sea of Okhotsk. He is said to have been killed by the Koriaks 

 on his return overland to Anadyrsk, or to have died of scurvy, but 

 the accounts of the expedition are both scanty and uncertain, and 

 nothing was known of the country he was said to have discovered 

 until the end of the seventeenth century. 



In 1697 Vladimir Atlasov was sent from Yakutsk to take the 

 connnand of the district of Anadyrsk, and in the following year he 

 despatched Luke Moroskoi, a Cossack, with a guard of sixteen 

 friendly natives, to collect the tribute from the country lying to 

 the south. On their return they reported that they had penetrated 

 the north of Kamschatka, and Atlasov, tempted by their description 

 of the country, resolved on conquering it without delay. He 

 accordingly started with a force of sixty Cossacks and about the 

 same number of natives, and sending half under Moroskoi towards 

 the Pacific, he marched southwards to the River Tigil. He met 

 with but slight resistance from the Kamschatkans themselves, but 

 his own natives revolted, and killing three of his Cossacks and 

 wounding several others, they were with difficulty overpowered. 

 Atlasov effectually prevented the recurrence of such an event by 

 putting the remaining rebels to death, and notwithstanding the 

 greatly reduced number of his followers, eventually reached Tigil, 

 where he effected a junction with the second party under Moroskoi. 

 The indomitable courage and resolution with which this mere 

 handful of men ventured into the midst of a hostile nation, in a 

 country which is one of the wildest and most impassable in the 

 world, is worthy of the highest admiration. In spite of having 

 reduced the tribes at the north of the peninsula, they had no thought 

 of return. From Tigil they marched to the Kamschatka Eiver, 

 and ascending it ahnost to its source, built a fort upon its banks, 



