38 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



multitudes of wild beasts. Everything here is ferocious, beginning with man. 

 Beyond these solitudes are deserts, peopled with wild beasts, as far as a ridge or 

 mountain hanging over the sea, which is called- Tabin (probably East Cape.) " 



In 1735 an experienced and energetic officer, Lieut. Wasili Proutscheschew, 

 was sent to survey the Promontory of Taimur and the Siberian coasts near the 

 mouth of the Lena. This was completed in part in 1736, but on his return in the 

 fall, Proutscheschew fell sick at Olenek, a Russian village on the shore of the 

 Arctic Ocean, and died from grief and disappointment at his non-success. His 

 wife, who had heroically followed him, died some few days after. 



In 1738 Lieut. Chariton Laptiew took the place of Proutscheschew, but was 

 not able any more than his predecessor to finish the survey between the Lena and 

 the Yenesei. By sea the work was finished by a land party with full success. 



To survey east of the Lena, Lieut. Lassennis and fifty-two men sailed in 1735 

 from Jakutzsk. He went that year along the coast to a small river between the 

 Lena and Juna. There he wintered with his vessel, sending six men with dis- 

 patches to Jakutzsk. In that terrible winter thirty-seven men died of scurvy of 

 the forty-six men left. When in June, 1736, assistance reached Lassennis, he 

 and all his men were dead. 



After this failure Lt. Dimitri Laptiew continued the survey from the Lena 

 east, and examined the coast to the Kolyma River, and, as some claim, he finish- 

 ed a complete examination of the Siberian coast to East Cape and the Anadyr 

 River, at the Anadirskoi Ostrog, but this has been denied, and that the Lieuten- 

 ant made his examination of the route to Anadirskoi by land. 



In 1760 '65 Shalauroff, an enterprising Russian, attempted to finish in per- 

 son the exploration ended by Laptiew at the Kolyma River. He penetrated by 

 following the coast to Tschaoon Bay, some 300 miles east. In 1764 in no man- 

 ner daunted, Shalauroff again attempted to reach East Cape. He proceeded this 

 time, it seems, from the inhabitable Lena. , This expedition was never afterward 

 heard from, except from rumors obtained from the Tchutzki, which was that 

 Shalaurofif and his men had all died near Cape Barannoi Kamen of starvation. 

 Wrangell afterward substantiated this fact, as some huts were found where the 

 unfortunate explorers had all died. 



In the first portion of this century Baron Von Wrangell and Lieut. Anjew, 

 both Russian officers, explored the coast from the Lena to near Cape Sendze 

 Kamen, on the Arctic Sea, but did not succeed in rounding East Cape by water, 

 which feat, since the passage of Deschnew and of Tara Staduchein in the 17th 

 century, has not been done until i878-'79, when it was completed by Professor 

 Nordenskiold in the steamer Vega, who rounded, the whole of Russia and Siberia 

 from North Cape to Behrings Strait. 



The Liakoff Islands were discovered in the last century by Sergeant Andreef 

 in 1770, and by a merchant Liakoff in 1770, who followed the back trail of a 

 herd of reindeer that had crossed from these islands to the main land of Siberia. 

 Liakoff in 1773 repeated his trip and wintered there, gathering fossil ivory, some 

 of the tusks measuring seven seven-twelfths feet long and weighing 115 pounds. 



