APPENDIX B 



STELLER 'S LETTER TO G.MELIN ABOUT 

 THE VOYAGE 1 



Honored and Respected Doctor, Esteemed Friend and Patron: 

 Your Highness' last letter from Krasnoyarsk I received at 

 Bolshaya River, Kamchatka, in September, 1742, and was glad 

 to learn from it of Your Highness ' health and recall to St. Peters- 



1 Published in the original German in: Joannis Georgii Gmelini . . . 

 Reliquias quae supersunt commercii epistolici cum Carolo Linnaeo, 

 Alberto Hallero, Guilielmo Stellero et al., Floram Gmehni sibiricam 

 ej usque Iter sibiricum potissimum concernentis, ex mandato et sumtibus 

 Academiae scientiarum Caesareae Petropolitanae publicandas curavit 

 Dr. Guil. Henr. Theodor Plieninger, Stuttgart, 1861, pp. 181-185, with 

 facsimile of beginning and end of letter (the latter reproduced in our 

 Fig. 30). 



The letter is reprinted from the above in Otto Gmelin, edit.: Johann 

 Georg Gmelin, 1709-1755, der Erforscher Sibiriens: Ein Gedenkbuch, 

 Munich, 1911, pp. 128-132. 



Johann Georg Gmelin (i 709-1 755), who had come in 1727 from his 

 native Tubingen to St. Petersburg and became in 1731 professor of 

 chemistry and natural history at the newly founded St. Petersburg 

 Academy of Sciences, was one of the three scientists originally appointed 

 to join Bering's second expedition, the other two being the historian 

 Gerhard Friedrich Miiller and the astronomer Louis Delisle de la Croyere 

 (see Vol. I, p. 32). The scientists began their journey in August, 1733, 

 and in the next four years Gmelin explored the Irtysh and Ob region, 

 Transbaikalia to the Chinese frontier at Kyakhta, and the Lena valley 

 down to Yakutsk. The plan was to continue to Kamchatka. But news 

 arrived that the authorities might not be able to provide sufficient pro- 

 visions. Hence Gmelin, who was discouraged by the passive resistance 

 to which the scientists had constantly been subjected by the local 

 Siberian officials, considered abandoning the journey to Kamchatka. He 

 retraced his steps up the Lena, went to Irkutsk to try to get the officials 

 to act, but, failing in this, he continued down the Angara and Upper 

 Tunguska to Yeniseisk. It was here that Steller, who had been appointed 

 as his assistant in natural history, joined him in January, 1739 (see above, 

 p. 2). Steller's voluntary offer and zeal to undertake the investigation 



I 



