114 VITUS BERIi^-G. 



circulation, that it is one^s plain duty to point out palpa- 

 ble errors. Nordenskjold is not very familiar with the 

 literature relating to this subject. He does not know 

 Berch\ Stuckenberg's, or Sokoloff^s works. Midden- 

 dorffs and Von Baer's clever treatises he uses only inci- 

 dentally. He has restricted himself to making extracts 

 from WrangelFs account, which in many respects is more 

 than incomplete, and does not put these expeditions in 

 the right light. It is now a couple of generations since 

 Wrangeirs work was written, which is more a general 

 survey than an historical presentation. While Norden- 

 skjold devotes page after page to an Othere^s, an Ivanoff's, 

 and a Martinier^s very indifferent or wholly imaginary 

 voyages around northern Norway, he disposes of the Great 

 Northern Expedition, without whose labors the voyage 

 of the Vega would have been utterly impossible, in five 

 unhappily written pages. One seeks in vain in his work 

 for the principal object of the Northern Expedition, — 

 for the leading idea that made these magnificent enter- 

 prises an organic whole, or for a full and just recognition 

 of these able, and, in some respects, unfortunate men, 

 whose labors have so long remained without due appreci- 

 ation. In spite of Middendorff^s interesting account of 

 the cartography of the Taimyr peninsula, Nordenskjold 

 does not make the slightest attempt to explain whether 

 his corrections of the cartography of this region are 

 corrections of the work of Laptjef and Chelyuskin, or of 

 the misrepresentations of their work made by a later age. 

 About the charting of Cape Chelyuskin he says: 

 "This was done by Chelyuskin in 1742 on a new sledging 

 expedition, the details of which are but little known; 



