INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. IX 



indifferent to Bering and the discussion of his claims. Far from it. 

 It has rather been that in invading the Bering world their dispo- 

 sition has led them to view the solid ground on which he made his 

 mark, rather than the clouds hovering above, and which this work 

 dissipates. It is rather of that character of ignorance— if so strong 

 a word is justifiable— that is found here in the persistent misspelling 

 of the great explorer's name and the bodies of water which have 

 transmitted it to posterity so well, although the authority— really 

 the absolute demand, if correctness is desired— for the change 

 from Behring to Bering has been well known to exist for a number 

 of years, and is now adopted in even our best elementary geogra- 

 phies. While the animalish axiom that "ignorance is bliss" is 

 probably never true, there may be cases v/here it is apparently 

 fortunate, and this may be so in that Americans in being seem- 

 ingly apathetic have really escaped a discussion which after all has 

 ended in placing the man considered in about the same status that 

 they always assumed he had filled. One might argue that it would 

 have been better for Americans, therefore, if they had been pre- 

 sented with a simple and authentic biography of the immortal 

 Danish-Russian, rather than with a book that is both a biography 

 and a defense, but Lauridsen's work after all is the best, I think all 

 will agree, as no biography of Bering could be complete without 

 some account of that part in which he had no making and no 

 share, as well as that better part which he chronicled with his 

 own brain and brawn. 



I doubt yet if Americans will take very much interest in the 

 dispute over Bering's simple claims in which he could take no 

 part; but that this book, which settles them so clearly, will be 

 welcomed by the reading classes of a nation that by acquisition in 

 Alaska has brought them so near the field of the labor of Bering, 

 I think there need not be the slightest fear. It is one of the most 

 important links yet welded by the wisdom of man which can be 

 made into a chain of history for our new acquisition whose history 

 is yet so imperfect, and will remain so, until Russian archives are 

 placed in the hands of those they consider fair-minded judges, 

 as in the present work. 



