After West Europe for two centuries had wearied itself with the question of a Northeast passage and made strenuous efforts to navigate the famed Strait of Anian, Russia undertook the task in a practical manner and went in search of the strait, before it started out on a voyage around the northern part of the old world.
Were Asia and America connected, or was there a strait between the two countries? Was there a Northwest and a Northeast passage? It was these great and interesting questions that were to be settled by Bering's first expedition. Peter himself had no faith in a strait. He had, however, no means of knowing anything about it, for at his death the east coast of Asia was known only as far as the island of Yezo. The Pacific coast of America had been explored and charted no farther than Cape Blanco, 43° north latitude, while all of the northern portion of the Pacific, its eastern and western coast-lines, its northern termination, and its relation to the polar sea, still awaited its discoverer.
The above-mentioned ukase shows that the Czar's inquisitive mind was dwelling on the possibility of being able, through northeastern Asia, to open a way to the rich European colonies in Central America. He knew neither the enormous extent of the far East nor the vastness of the ocean that separated it from the Spanish colonies. Yet even at that time, various representatives of the great empire living in northeastern Siberia had some knowledge of the relative situation of the two continents and could have given Bering's expedition valuable directions.
Rumors of the proximity of the American continent to the northeastern corner of Asia must very early have been transmitted through Siberia, for the geographers of the sixteenth century have the relative position of the two continents approximately correct. Thus on the Barents map of 1598, republished by J. J. Pontanus in 1611, a large continent towers above northeastern Asia with the superscription, "America Pars," the two countries being separated by the Strait of Anian[5] (Fretum Anian). On a map by Joducus Hondius, who died in 1611, East Siberia is drawn as a parallelogram projecting toward the northeast, and directly opposite and quite near the northeast corner of this figure a country is represented with the same superscription. This is found again in the map by Gerhard Mercator which accompanies Nicolai Witsen's "Noord en Ost Tartarye," 1705, and in several other sixteenth century atlases. It is quite impossible to determine how much of this apparent knowledge is due to vague reports combined with happy guessing, and how much to a practical desire for such a passage on the part of European navigators, whose expensive polar expeditions otherwise would be folly. This much is certain, however: Witsen and other leading geographers based their views on information received from Siberia and Russia.[6]
In the history of discoveries the spirit of human enterprise has fought its way through an incalculable number of mirages. These have aroused the imagination, caused agitations, debates, and discussions, but have usually veiled an earlier period's knowledge of the question. There are many re-discovered countries on our globe. So in this case. The northwestern part of America wholly disappeared from the cartography of the seventeenth century, and through the influence of Witsen's and Homann's later maps it became customary to represent the eastern coast of Asia by a meridian passing a little east of Yakutsk, without any suggestions whatever in regard to its strongly marked peninsulas or to an adjacent western continent. But even these representations were originally Russian, and are undoubtedly due to the first original Russian atlas, published by Remesoff. They finally gave way to the geographical explorations of the eighteenth century, which began shortly after the accession of Peter the Great, having been provoked by political events and conditions.
By the treaty of Nertchinsk in 1689 the Yablonoi Mountains were established as the boundary line between Russia and China. By this means the way to the fertile lands of Amoor was barred to that indurate caste of Russian hussars and Cossacks who had conquered for the White Czar the vast tracts of Siberia. A second time they fell upon northeastern Siberia, pressing their way, as before, across uninhabited tundras along the northern ocean, and thence conquered the inhabited districts toward the south. They discovered the island of Liakhov, penetrated the country of the Chukchees, Koriaks, and Kamshadales, and at the Anadyr River, in Deshneff's old palisaded fort, they found that point of support from which they maintained Russia's power in the extreme northeast. In this way the Russians learned the enormous extent of the country; but as they had no exact locations, they formed a very incorrect opinion of its outlines, and estimated its length from west to east too small by forty degrees.
From the fort on the Anadyr, Kamchatka was conquered in the first years of the eighteenth century, and from here came the first information concerning America. In 1711 the Cossack Popoff visited the Chukchee peninsula, and here he heard that from either side of the peninsula, both from the "Kolymaic" Sea and the Gulf of Anadyr, an island could be seen in the distance, which the Chukchees called "the great land." This land they said they could reach in baidars (boats rowed by women) in one day. Here were found large forests of pine, cedar, and other trees, and also many different kinds of animals not found in their country. This reliable information concerning America seems at the time to have been known in other parts of Siberia only in the way of vague reports, and was soon confused with descriptions of islands in the Arctic.
Czar Peter, however, soon laid his adjusting hand upon these groping efforts. By the aid of Swedish prisoners of war, he opened the navigation from Okhotsk to Kamchatka, and thus avoided the circuitous route by way of the Anadyr. A Cossack by the name of Ivan Kosyrefski (the son of a Polish officer in Russian captivity) was ordered to explore the peninsula to its southern extremity, and also some of the Kurile Islands. In 1719 he officially despatched the surveyors Yevrinoff and Lushin to ascertain whether Asia and America were connected, but secretly he instructed them to go to the Kurile Islands to search for precious metals, especially a white mineral which the Japanese were said to obtain in large quantities from the fifth or sixth island. Through these various expeditions there was collected vast, although unscientific, materials for the more correct understanding of the geography of eastern Asia, the Sea of Okhotsk, Kamchatka, the Kuriles, and Yezo. Even concerning the Island of Nipon (Hondo), shipwrecked Japanese had given valuable information. Simultaneously, the northern coast about the mouth of the Kolyma, had been explored by the Cossacks Viligin and Amossoff. Through them the first information concerning the Bear Islands and Wrangell Island found its way to Yakutsk. The Cossack chief Shestakoff, who had traveled into the northeastern regions toward the land of the Chukchees, accepted the accounts of the former for his map, but as he could neither read nor write, matters were most bewilderingly confused. Yet his representations were later accepted by Strahlenberg and Joseph de l'Isle in their maps.