BERING'S FIRST EXPEDITION. 17 



estimated its length from west to east too small by forty 

 degrees. 



From the fort on the Anadyr, Kamchatka was con- 

 quered in the first years of the eighteenth century, and 

 from here came the first information concerning America. 

 In 1711 the Cossack Popoff visited the Chukchee penin- 

 sula, and here he heard that from either side of the 

 peninsula, both from the " Kolymaic " Sea and the Gulf 

 of Anadyr, an island could be seen in the distance, which 

 the Chukchees called '^'^the great land.^' This land they 

 said they could reach in laidars (boats rowed by women) 

 in one day. Here were found large forests of pine, 

 cedar, and other trees, and also many different kinds of 

 animals not found in their country. This reliable infor- 

 mation concerning America seems at the time to have 

 been known in other parts of Siberia only in the way of 

 vague reports, and was soon confused with descriptions of 

 islands in the Arctic. 



Czar Peter, however, soon laid his adjusting hand 

 upon these groping efforts. By the aid of Swedish pris- 

 oners of war, he opened the navigation from Okhotsk to 

 Kamchatka, and thus avoided the circuitous route by way 

 of the Anadyr. A Cossack by the name of Ivan Kosyref- 

 ski (the son of a Polish officer in Russian captivity) was 

 ordered to explore the peninsula to its southern ex- 

 tremity, and also some of the Kurile Islands. In 1719 

 he officially despatched the surveyors Yevrinoff and 

 Lushin to ascertain whether Asia and America were con- 

 nected, but secretly he instructed them to go to the 

 Kurile Islands to search for precious metals, especially a 

 white mineral which the Japanese were said to obtain in 



