[321] According to P. von Haven (Nye og forbedrede Efterretningar om det Russiske Rige, Kjöbenhavn, 1747, ii. p. 20), "it was the custom in Petersburg to send away those whose presence was inconvenient to help Behring to make new discoveries". It also went very ill with many of the gallant Russian Polar travellers, and many of them were repaid with ingratitude. Behring was received on his return from his first voyage, so rich in results, with unjustified mistrust. Steller was exposed to continual trouble, was long prevented from returning from Siberia, and finally perished during his journey home, broken down in body and soul. Prontschischev and Lassinius succumbed to hardships and sufferings during their voyages in the Polar Sea. Owzyn was degraded, among other things, because he used to be too intimate at Obdorsk with exiles formerly of distinction. A few years before the voyage of the Vega, Chelyuskin's trustworthiness was still doubted. All the accounts of discoveries of islands and land in the Polar Sea by persons connected with Siberia, have till the most recent times, been considered more or less fictitious, yet they are clearly in the main true.
[322] Wrangel, i. p. 46.
[323] According to Wrangel (i., note at p. 38 and 48), probably after a quotation from Prontschischev's journal. The Lena must be a splendid river, for it has since made the same powerful impression, as on the seamen of the Great Northern Expedition, on all others who have traversed its forest-crowned river channel.
[324] These all perished "for want of fodder." This, however, is improbable. For, in 1878, we saw numerous traces of these animals as far to the northward as Cape Chelyuskin, and very fat reindeer were shot both in 1861 and 1873, on the Seven Islands, the northernmost of all the islands of the Old World, where vegetation is much poorer than in the regions now in question.
[325] Wrangel, i. pp. 48 and 72. Of the journey round the northernmost point of Asia, Wrangel says—"Von der Tajmur-Mündung bis an das Kap des heiligen Faddej konnte die Küste nicht beschifft werden, und die Aufnahme, die der Steuermann Tschemokssin (Chelyuskin) auf dem Eise in Narten vornahm, ist so oberflächlich und unbestimmt, dass die eigentliche Lage des nordöstlichen oder Tajmur-Kaps, welches die nördlichste Spitse Asiens ausmacht, noch gar nicht ausgemittelt ist."
[326] Wrangel, i, p. 62. I have sketched the voyages between the White Sea and the Kolyma, principally after Engelhardt's German translation of Wrangel's Travels. It is, unfortunately, in many respects defective and confused, especially with respect to the sketch of Chariton Laptev and his followers, sledge journeys, undertaken in order to survey the coast between the Chatanga and the Pjäsina. Müller mentions these journeys only in passing. Wrangel gives as sources for his sketch (i. note at p. 38) Memoirs of the Russian Admiralty, also the original journals of the journeys. Chelyuskin he calls Chemokssin.
[327] In this account of Behring's and Chirikov's voyages, I have followed Müller (iii. pp. 187-268). More complete original accounts of Behring's voyage are quoted further on in the sketch of our visit to Behring Island.
[328] Müller, iii. p. 164.
[329] It deserves to be noted as a literary curiosity that the famous French savant and geographer, Vivien do Saint Martin, in his work, Histoire de la Géographie et des Découvertes géographiques, Paris, 1873, does not say a single word regarding all those expeditions which form an epoch in our knowledge of the Old World.
[330] An account of Schalaurov is given by COXE (Russian Discoveries, &c., 1780, p. 323) and Wrangel (i. p. 73). That the hut seen by Matiuschkin actually belonged to Schalaurov appears to me highly improbable, for the traditions of the Siberian savages seldom extend sixty years back.