2 LIFE OF STELLER 



widow, Brigitta Messerschmidt. She assured him that she was 

 ready to go with him to the ends of the world and share his 

 hardships, but when the time came for leaving she decided to 

 stay home and share his pay. Heartsick and alone he set out 

 for the wilds of Siberia in the last months of 1737. He followed 

 the much-traveled road to Tomsk, reaching there in the autumn 

 of 1738, and hastened from there to Yeniseisk to join his two 

 countrymen and fellow members of the expedition, the historian 

 Gerhard Friedrich M tiller and the naturalist Johann Georg 

 Gmelin. With them he spent about seven weeks (January 20 

 to March 5, 1739) telling them his disappointments, his plans, 

 and his ambitions, and receiving comfort and encouragement in 

 return.2 From Yeniseisk he pushed on to Irkutsk, Yakutsk, and 

 Okhotsk, where he took ship for Kamchatka and landed at 

 Bolsheretsk on October 2, 1740. 



While on the way, at Kirensk Post on the upper Lena, Steller 

 had met Captain Spanberg^ and asked to be taken to Japan. 



2 Among the Steller papers in the archives of the Russian Academy of 

 Sciences there is the following list of books which Miiller and Gmelin 

 gave Steller when he parted from them: 



Caspar! Bauhini Pinax. [Gaspard Bauhin: Pinax theatri botanici, 

 Basel, 1596, 1623.] 



Turnefortii Institutiones rei herbariae, cum coroUario. [Joseph 

 Pitton de Tournefort: Institutiones rei herbariae, 3 vols., Paris, 1700.] 



Thomae Willis Opera omnia. [Thomas Willis: Opera omnia, 2 vols., 

 Geneva, 1680 (later imprints also).] 



loann Ray Methodus emendata et aucta, 17 10. [John Ray: Methodus 

 plantarum emendata et aucta, Leyden, 1703 (first publ. London, 1682).] 



Ej. — De variis plantarum methodis dissertatio. [John Ray: De 

 variis plantarum methodis dissertatio, London, 1696.] 



Ej. — Stirpium Europearum extra Britannias nascentium sylloge. 

 [John Ray: Stirpium europearum extra Britannias nascentium sylloge, 

 London, 1694.] 



Ej. — Synopsis methodica animalium quadripedium et serpentini 

 generis. [John Ray: Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et 

 serpentini generis, London, 1693, 1696.] 



3 On Spanberg and his expeditions to Japan see below, in the journal, 

 footnote 18. 



