[311] Von Baer, Beiträge zur Kentniss des Russischen Reiches, xvi. p. 33.
[312] Ambjörn Molin, lieutenant in the Scanian cavalry regiment, who was taken prisoner at the Dnieper in 1709, also took part in these journeys. Compare Berättelse om de i Stora Tartariet boende tartarer, som träffats längst nordost i Asien, på ärkebiskop E. Benzelii begäran upsatt af Ambjörn Molin (Account of the Tartars dwelling in Great Tartary who were met with at the north east extremity of Asia, written at the request of Archbishop E. Benzelius by Ambjörn Molin), published in Stockholm in 1880 by Aug. Strindberg, after a manuscript in the Linköping library.
[313] Müller, iii. p. 102. According to an oral communication by Busch, Strahlenberg's account (p. 17) of this voyage appears to contain several mistakes. The year is stated as 1713, the return voyage is said to have occupied six days.
[314] As late as 1819, James Burney, first lieutenant on one of Captain Cook's vessels during his voyage north of Behring's Straits, afterwards captain and member of the Royal Society, considered it not proved that Asia and America are separated by a sound. For he doubted the correctness of the accounts of Deschnev's voyage. Compare James Burney, A Chronological History of North eastern Voyages of Discovery London, 1819, p. 298; and a paper by Burney in the Transactions of the Royal Society, 1817. Burney was violently attacked for the views there expressed by Captain John Dundas Cochrane. Narrative of a Pedestrian Journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, 2nd ed. London, 1824, Appendix.
[315] The first astronomical determinations of position in Siberia were, perhaps, made by Swedish prisoners of war; the first in China by Jesuits (Cf. Strahlenberg, p. 14).
[316] A short, but instructive account of Behring's first voyage, based on an official communication from the Russian Government to the King of Poland, is inserted in t. iv. p. 561 of Description géographique de l'Empire de la Chine, par le P. J. B. Du Halde, La Haye, 1736. The same official report was probably the source of Müller's brief sketch of the voyage (Müller, iii. p. 112). A map of it is inserted in the 1735 Paris edition of Du Halde's work, and in Nouvel Atlas de la Chine, par M. D'Anville, La Haye, 1737.
[317] Histoire généalogique des Tartares (note, p. 107), and Strahlenberg's oft-quoted work (map, text, pp. 31 and 384).
[318] This expedition was under the command of the Admiralty; the others under that of Behring. In my account I have followed partly Müller and partly Wrangel, of whom the latter, in his book of travels, gives a historical 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.
[319] Wrangel, i. p. 36.
[320] Wrangel, i. p. 38.