156 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
accidental resemblance of sound, of the name of the river and 
bay, Tas, between the Ob and the Yenisej. Finally, the borders 
of the maps are often adorned with pictures of wonderfully 
formed men, whose dwellings the hunters placed in those 
regions, the names being at the same time given of a larger 
or smaller number of peoples and cities mentioned by Marco 
Polo. 
On the whole, the voyages of the Portuguese to India and 
the Eastern archipelago, the discovery of America and the 
first circumnavigation of the globe, exerted little influence on the 
current ideas regarding the geography of North Asia. A new 
period in respect of our knowledge of this part of the old world 
first began with the publication of Herberstein’s Reriim 
Moscomticarnm Commentarii, Vindobonse 1549.^ This work has 
annexed to it a map with the title “ Moscovia Sigismundi 
liberi baronis in Herberstein Neiperg et Gutnhag. Anno 
MDXLix. Hanc tabulam absolvit Aug. Hirsfogel Yiennse 
Austriae cum gra. et privi. imp.,” ^ which indeed embraces only 
a small part of Siberia, but shows that a knowledge of North 
Russia now began to be based on actual observations. A large 
gulf, marked with the name Mare Glaciale (the present White 
^ See note at page 54, vol. i,, for an account of von Herberstein and his 
works, 
2 As the copy of the original map to which I have had access, being 
coloured, is unsuitable for photo-lithographing, I give here instead a photo¬ 
lithographic reproduction of the map in the Italian edition printed in 1550. 
The map itself is unchanged in any essential particular, but the drawing 
and engraving are better. There is, besides, a still older map of Russia in 
the first edition of Sebastian Miinster’s Cosmographia Universalis. I have | 
not had access to this edition, but have had to the third edition of the same | 
work printed at Basel in 1550. A very incomplete map of Russia engraved 
on wood, on which, however, the Obi and the Sybir ” are to be found, is 
inserted in this work at page 910. The Dwina here falls not into the White 
Sea but into the Gulf of Finland, through a lake to which the name Ladoga 
is now given; places like Astracan, Asof, Viborg, Calmahori (Kolmogor), j 
Solowki (Solovets), &c., are indicated pretty correctly, and in the White Sea 
there is to be seen a very faithful representation of a walrus swimming. i 
i 
