De risle's own Statements. 213 



It behooves us, then, to inquire carefully into the authenticity 

 of the alleged map of cle I'lsle of 1731, since if he antedated 

 his opinions as to the route he might also have antedated his 

 map. Fortunately we do not have to depend only on de I'Isle's 

 own statement, either in 1750 before the Academy of Sciences 

 at Paris, or as published in 1738 at St. Petersburg and printed at 

 the printing office of the Royal Academy ; for we also have ex- 

 traneous and convincing evidence, even from sources critically 

 hostile to the French astronomer. 



M. de I'Isle, in his Memoires sur les Nouvelles decouvertes au 

 Nord de la mer du Sud, Paris, 1752, says : 



"After I had, near twenty years ago, got these first informations of tlie 

 longitude of Kamschatka by means of Captain Bering's map and journal, 

 I made use of them in constructing tlie map, representing the eastern 

 extremity of Asia, with the opposite coast of North America, in order to 

 sliow at once what still remains for discovery between two large parts of 

 tlie world. 



" This map I had tlae lionor of presenting to the Empress Anne and the 

 Senate, in order to animate the Russians to undertake these discoveries, 

 and it took effect, tliis princess ordering a second voyage to be made 

 according to the plan which I had drawn up for it." 



' " Two maps," he adds, were presented to the Academy in 

 Paris, " one being a copy of the map which I had drawn at St. 

 Petersburg, 1731, on Captain Bering's first voyage, and had the 

 honor of presenting to-the Empress Anne and the Senate, with a 

 manuscript memoir explaining its use and construction." The 

 other map (from which the lithograph before you was lately 

 reproduced) was, according to de I'Isle, only changed by adding 

 the later discoveries of Bering and his lieutenants. 

 De I'Isle further says of this chart: 



" The second manuscript map which I laid before the xlcademy at Paris 

 was in all respects like the former, only with the advantages of the new 

 discoveries made since 1731." 



Ph. Buache, the French geographer, made for de I'Isle a re- 

 duced copy of the second chart, and it is supposed that the map 

 before you is a substantial reproduction of that copy. 



In the preface to de I'Isle's scattered essays, 1738, St. Peters- 

 burg, page 2, we find : 



"Aiant compare la situation du Kamschatka et des pais voisins, avec 

 celle de la Chine, du roiaume de Coree, du Japon, et de la terre d'Yeco, 

 qui m'etoit connue d'ailleurs, je me suis fait un sisteme, & j'ai dresse I'an 



29— Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. Ill, 1891. 



