CHAPTER XIII.
The development of our knowledge of the north coast of Asia—Herodotus—Strabo—Pliny—Marco Polo—Herberstein's map—The conquest of Siberia by the Russians—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—Andrejev's Land—The New Siberian islands—Hedenström'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 uttermost 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 circumnavigate the earth and have turned, declare that their undertaking did not fail in consequence of their having met with land, but in consequence of want of provisions and of complete timidity.
At sea they could always have gone further. This view (that the earth is surrounded by water) also accords better with the phenomena of the tides, for as the ebb and flow are everywhere the same, or at least do not vary much, the cause of this motion is to be sought for in a single ocean."[289]
But if men were thus agreed that the north coast of Asia and Europe was bounded by the sea, there was for sixteen hundred years after the birth of Christ no actual knowledge of the nature of the Asiatic portion of this line of coast. Obscure statements regarding it, however, were current at an early period.
While HERODOTUS, in the forty-fifth chapter of his Fourth Book, expressly says that no man, so far as was then known, had discovered whether the eastern and northern countries of Europe are surrounded by the sea, he gives in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters of the same book the following account of the countries lying to the north-east:—
"As far as the territory of the Scythians all the land which we have described is an uninterrupted plain, with cultivable soil, but beyond that the ground is stony and rugged. And on the other side of this extensive stone-bound tract there live at the foot of a high mountain-chain men who are bald from their birth, both men and women, they are also flat-nosed and have large chins. They speak a peculiar language, wear the Scythian dress and live on the fruit of a tree. The tree on which they live is called Ponticon, is about as large as the wild fig-tree, and bears fruit which resembles a bean, but has a kernel. When this fruit is ripe, they strain it through a cloth, and the juice which flows from it is thick and black and called aschy. This juice they suck or drink mixed with milk, and of the pressed fruits they make cakes which they eat, for they have not many cattle because the pasture is poor. As far as to these bald people the land is now sufficiently well known, also the races on this side of them, because they are visited by Scythians. From them it is not difficult to collect information, which is also to be had from the Greeks at the port of the Borysthenes and other ports in Pontus. The Scythians who travel thither do business with the assistance of seven interpreters in seven languages. So far our knowledge extends. But of the land on the other side of the bald men none can give any trustworthy account because it is shut off by a separating wall of lofty trackless mountains, which no man can cross. But these bald men say—which, however, I do not believe—that men with goat's feet live on the mountains, and on the other side of them other men who sleep six months at a time. The latter statement, however, I cannot at all admit. On the other hand, the land east of the bald men, in which the Issedones live, is well known, but what is farther to the north, both on the other side of the bald men and of the Issedones, is only known by the statements of these tribes. Above the Issedones live the one-eyed men, and the gold-guarding griffins. This information the Scythians have got from the Issedones and we from the Scythians, and we call the one-eyed race by the Scythian name Arimaspi, for in the Scythian language arima signifies one and spou the eye. The whole of the country which I have been speaking of has so hard and severe a winter, that there prevails there for eight months an altogether insupportable cold, so that if you pour water on the ground you will not make mud, but if you light a fire you will make mud. Even the sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian Bosphorus, and the Scythians who live within the trench travel on the ice and drive over it in waggons. . . . Again, with reference to the feathers with which the Scythians say the air is filled, and which prevent the whole land lying beyond from being seen or travelled through, I entertain the following opinion. In the upper parts of this country it snows continually, but, as is natural, less in summer than in winter. And whoever has seen snow falling thick near him will know what I mean. For snow resembles feathers, and on account of the winter being so severe the northern parts of this continent cannot be inhabited. I believe then that the Scythians and their neighbours called snow feathers, on account of the resemblance between them. This is what is stated regarding the most remote regions."
These and other similar statements, nowithstanding the absurdities mixed up with them, are founded in the first instance on the accounts of eye-witnesses, which have passed from mouth to mouth, from tribe to tribe, before they were noted down. Still several centuries after the time of Herodotus, when the Roman power had reached its highest point, little more was known of the more remote parts of north Asia. While Herodotus, in the two hundred and third chapter of his First Book, says that "the Caspian is a sea by itself having no communication with any other sea," Strabo, induced by evidence