2. Sammlung Russ. Geschichte, III., p. 50.—P. Avril's Accounts of America, collected in Smolensk, 1686.—Vaugondie: Memoires, p. 4. Les géographes des 16' et 17' siècles ont toujours pensé que la mer separait l'Asie de l'Amérique.
See also a very interesting essay on the first Russian accounts of America: The Great Land, Bolshaia Zemlia, in the Memoirs of the Department of Hydrography (Zapiski), Vol. IX., p. 78.
The name Anian Strait has arisen through a misunderstanding of Marco Polo's book (lib. III., cap. 5). His Ania is no doubt the present Anam, but the Dutch cartographers thought that this land was in Northeast Asia, and called the strait that was said to separate the continents the Strait of Anian. The name appears for the first time on Gerh. Mercator's famous maritime chart of 1569.
Dr. Soph. Ruge: Fretum Aniam, Dresden, 1873, p. 13.
3. G. F. Müller, in Schreiben eines Russ. Officiers von der Flotte p. 14, seeks to take to himself all the honor for our knowledge of Deshneff's journey, but this is not tenable. See Beiträge zur Kenntniss des russischen Reiches, XVI., 44. Bering did not collect his information concerning Deshneff in Kamchatka, but in Yakutsk, and referred Müller to this matter.
A. Strindberg: P. J. v. Strahlenberg, in the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, 1879, No. 6.
4. V. Berch: The First Voyage of the Russians, pp. 2-5.
5. Bering's report to the Admiralty, in The First Voyage of the Russians, p. 14, together with his original account in Description géographique, historique de l'empire de la Chine. Par le Père J. B. Du Halde. La Hague, 1736, IV., 562.
6. G. W. Steller: Beschreibung v. dem Lande Kamtschatka. Frankfurt, 1774.