1382 National Geographic Magazine. 
remains to the data which have been translated or paraphrased by 
Bergh, Lauridsen and Olson, necessarily submitting to more or less 
modification in the process. 
The most authentic and important document for the history of this 
voyage is naturally the official report handed in by Bering himself and 
printed in the Journal of the Military Topographical Depot of the 
Russian Army, volume x, pp. 67-79, St. Petersburg, 1847. 
This journal is a quarto and the report is printed verbatim et literatim 
if one may judge by the archaic and mispelled words with which it is 
adorned. It comprises Bering’s report including his instructions, a 
table of geographical positions, and a painfully detailed table of routes 
and distances by which his position in Kamchatka was computed. 
This report has never been translated in full and unmodified, the orig- 
inal is thought to have been lost. The present publication is not re- 
ferred to by Lauridsen and was apparently unknown to him. I 
have therefore thought it worth while to prepare an English version 
of the report and geographical table which are incorporated in. this 
paper. 
The result shows that the previous versions of the report which have 
appeared were more or less mutilated or colored by the editors printing 
them, probably with the view of making the report of more popular 
interest to their readers but with injurious results to its historic value 
for reference. 
We now come to the latest contributions to the subject. If it were 
not for the deficiencies in them, which seem to me serious, this paper 
would not have been prepared, but it seemed to be a pity that the sources 
of information in regard to Bering, accessible to those who do not read 
Russian should not be both more impartial and more accurate. 
Vitus J. Bering og de Russiske opdagelsesrejser fra 1725-43. 
Af P. Lauridsen. Udgivet med understottelse af den Hielm- 
stierne-Rosencroneske  stiftelse. Kjébenhavn. Gyldendalske 
Boghandels forlag (F. Hegel & Sén). Fr. Bagges bogtrykker, 
1885. Small 4°, six prel. 1. 211 pp., 4 sheets of charts, one plate, 
one wood-cut. 
‘ 
This work is an attempt at a life of Bering which should combine 
an account of his*career with a reversal of the generally received 
opinion in regard to his indecision of character. It embodies a general 
polemic against those who at different times have criticised the explorer. 
It contains a paraphrase of some portions of Bergh’s work which had 
not previously been accessible in any language except the Russian, yet 
which would have been much more valuable in the shape of exact 
translation and quotation. The author labored under the disadvantages 
of not understanding the language in which all the original records 
both printed and in manuscript are written; of having little or no 
