CHAPTER XIIT. 
The development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia—Hero¬ 
dotus—Strabo—Pliny—Marco Polo—Herberstein’s map—The conquest 
of Siberia by the Eussians—Deschnev’s voyages—Coast navigation 
between the Lena and the Kolyma—Accounts of islands in the Polar 
Sea and old voyages to them—The discovery of Kamchatka—The 
navigation of the Sea of Okotsk is opened by Swedish prisoners-of- 
war—The Great Northern Expedition—Behring—Schalaurov—Andre¬ 
yev’s Land—The New Siberian islands—Hedenstrom’s expeditions— 
Anjou and Wrangel—Voyages from Behring’s Straits westward— 
Fictitious Polar voyages. 
Now that the north-eastern promontory of Asia has been at last 
circumnavigated, and vessels have thus sailed along all the 
coasts of the old world, I shall, before proceeding farther in my 
sketch of the voyage of the Vega, give a short account of the 
development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia. 
Already in primitive times the Greeks assumed that all the 
countries of the earth were surrounded by the ocean. Strabo, 
in the first century before Christ, after having shown that 
Homer favoured this view, brings together in the first chapter 
of the First Book of his geography reasons in support of it in the 
following terms 
“ In all directions in which man has penetrated to the utter¬ 
most boundary of the earth, he has met the sea, that is, the 
ocean. He has sailed round the east coast towards India, the 
west coast towards Iberia and Mauritia, and a great part of the 
south and north coast. The remaining portion which has not 
yet been sailed round in consequence of the voyages which have 
been undertaken from both sides not having been connected, is 
inconsiderable. For those who have attempted to circumnavi- 
