Vlll IN-TRODUCTION TO AMEEICAN EDITION. 



censured Peter the Great's selection of an oriental explorer. In 

 short, America has always respected Bering as a great explorer, 

 and oftentimes heralded him as one of the highest of heroes, what- 

 ever may have been the varying phases of European thought on the 

 subject; and the reasons therefor, I think, are two-fold. In the 

 first place, the continent which Bering first separated from the 

 old world is yet a new country. Since its discovery, not only 

 exploration, but commercial exploration, or pioneering as we call 

 it, has been going on, and in this every one has taken his part or 

 mingled often with those who have. Presidents who were 

 pioneers, have been contemporaries with our times, while those who 

 have struggled on the selvage of civilization are numerous among 

 us, and their adventures as narrated in books are familiar stories 

 to our ears. Such a people, I believe, are much less liable to 

 listen to the labored logic of a critic against a man who carried his 

 expedition six thousand miles across a wilderness and launched 

 it on the inhospitable shores of an unknown sea, to solve a problem 

 that has borne them fruit, than others not similarly situated would 

 be. While the invariable rule has been that where the path-finder 

 and critic — unless the critic has been an explorer in the same field — 

 have come in collision, the latter has always gone to the wall, it is 

 easy to see that with a jury that have themselves lived amidst 

 similar, though possibly slighter, frontier fortunes, such a verdict is 

 more readily reached c 



The other reason, which is not so commendable, is that few 

 Americans at large have interested themselves in the discussion, 

 or in fact knew much about it. True, the criticisms on the Eastern 

 continent have been re-echoed on this side of the water, and even 

 added to, but they have created no general impression worth 

 recording as such in a book that will undoubtedly have far wider 

 circulation than the discussion has ever had, unless I have mis- 

 judged the temper of the American people to desire information 

 on just such work as Bering has done, and which for the first 

 time is presented to them in anything like an authentic way by 

 Professor Olson's translation of Mr. Lauridsen's work. I do not 

 wish to be understood that we as a nation have been wholly 



