54 VITUS BERING. 



leading geographer of his age. Hence, as a geographer, 

 he was merely an echo of his brother. 



One of Guillaume De Tlsle^s most famous essays had 

 been on the island of Yezo. In 1643 the stadtholder of 

 Batavia, the able Van Diemen, sent the ships Kastri- 

 kon and Breskens under the command of Martin de 

 Vries and Hendrick Corneliszoon Schaep to Japan for 

 the purpose of navigating the east coast of the island of 

 Nipon (Hondo), and thence go in search of America by 

 sailing in a northwesterly direction to the 45th degree of 

 latitude ; but in case they did not find America, which 

 people continued to believe lay in these regions, they 

 were to turn toward the northeast and seek the coast of 

 Asia on the 56th degree of latitude. De Vries partly 

 carried out his chimerical project. At 40° north latitude 

 he saw the coast of Nipon, two degrees farther north, 

 the snow-capped mountains of Yezo, and thence sailed 

 between the two Kuriles lying farthest to the south, 

 which he called Staaten Eiland and Kompagniland. He 

 then continued his voyage into the Sea of Okhotsk to 

 48° north latitude, where he turned about, saw Yezo in 

 latitude 45°, but came, without noticing La Perouse 

 Strait, over to Saghalin, which he considered a part of 

 Yezo, and as he followed the coast of Saghalin to Cape 

 Patience in latitude 48°, he thought Yezo a very exten- 

 sive island on the eastern coast of Asia. Through the 

 cartography of the seventeenth century, for example 

 Witsen's and Homann^'s Atlas, but especially through Guil- 

 laume De I'Isle's globes and maps, these erroneous ideas 

 were scattered over the earth, and, when the first accounts 

 of Kamchatka, without being accompanied by a single 



