XIII.] 
THE GEEAT NOETHEEN EXPEDITION. 
T83 
southwards to connect the areas which the West-Europeans and 
the Kussians were exploring. 
The Russian senate, the Board of Admiralty, and the Academy 
of Sciences were commissioned to develop this plan and to carry 
it into execution. With respect to the way in which the com¬ 
mission was executed I may be allowed to refer to Muller’s oft- 
quoted work, and to a paper by Vox Baer ; Peters des G-rossen 
Verdienste '%im die Erioeiteriing der geogra'phisclien Kenntnisse 
(Beitrdge z%ir Kenntniss des Bussischen Reiches, B. 16, St. Peters-' 
burg, 1872). Here I can only mention that it was principally 
through the untiring interest which Kirilov, the secretary of 
the senate, took in the undertaking, that it attained such a 
development that it may be said to have been perhaps the 
greatest scientific expedition which has ever been sent out by 
any country. It was determined at the same time not only to 
ascertain the extent of Siberia to the north and east, but also to 
examine its hitherto almost unknown ethnographical and natural 
conditions. For this purpose the Great Northern Expedition was 
divided into the following divisions :— 
1. An expedition to start from Archangel for the 06.^--For this 
expedition two kotsches were employed, the Oh and the Expedition, 
52J feet long, 14 feet broad, and 8 feet deep, each manned with 
20 men. The vessels, which were under the command of 
Lieutenants Paulov and Muravjev, left Archangel on the ^|th 
July, 1734. The first summer they only reached Mutnoi Saliv 
in the Kara Sea, whence they returned to the Petchora and 
wintered at Pustosersk. The following year they broke up in 
1 This expedition was under the command of the Admiralty; the others 
under that of Behring. In my account I have followed partly Muller and 
partly Wrangel, of whom the latter, in his book of travels, gives a his¬ 
torical review of previous voyages along the coasts of the Asiatic Polar 
Sea. The accounts of the voyages between the White Sea and the Yenisej 
properly belong to a foregoing chapter in this work, but I quote them first 
here in order that I may treat of the different divisions of the Great 
Northern Expedition in the same connection. 
