Xlll.] 
ANDRE JEV. 
203 
large and small islands. Andrejev found everywhere numerous 
proofs that the islands which he visited had been formerly 
inhabited. Among other things he saw a large hut built of 
wood without the help of iron tools. The logs were as it were 
gnawed with teeth (hewed with stone axes), and bound together 
with thongs.^ Its position and construction indicated that the 
house had been built for defence ; it had thus been found im¬ 
possible in the desolate regions of the Polar Sea to avoid the 
discord and the strife which prevail in more southerly lands. 
To the east and north-east Andrejev thought he saw a distant 
land; he is also clearly the true European discoverer of Wrangel 
Land, provided we do not consider that even he had a pre¬ 
decessor in the Cossack, Feodor Tatarinov, who according to 
the concluding words of Andrejev’s journal appears to have 
previously visited the same islands. It is highly desirable that 
this journal, if still in existence, be published in a completely 
unaltered form. How important this is appears from the fol¬ 
lowing paragraph in the instructions given to Billings :—'' One 
Sergeant Andrejev saw from the last of the Bear Islands a large 
island to which they (Andrejev and his companions) travelled in 
dog-sledges. But they turned when they had gone twenty 
versts from the coast, because they saw fresh traces of a large 
number of men, who had travelled in sledges drawn by rein¬ 
deer.” 2 
In order to visit the large land in the north-east seen by 
Andrejev, there was sent out in the years 1769, 1770, and 1771 
another expedition, consisting of the three surveyors, Leontiev, 
Lussov, and Puschkarev, with dog-sledges over the ice to the 
north-east, but they succeeded neither in reaching the land in 
question, nor even ascertaining with certainty whether it actually 
existed or not. Among the natives, however, the belief in it 
^ Wrangel, i. p. 79. 
Sauer, An Account^ &c., Appendix, p. 48. 
