A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels - Volume 18 / Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and / Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth / Century, By William Stevenson

by Robert Kerr; William Stevenson

The immense extent of the Pacific Ocean, which presented to navigators at the beginning of the eighteenth century but few islands, seemed to promise a more abundant harvest to repeated and more minute examination, and this promise has been fulfilled. New Holland, however, was the only portion of the world of great extent which could be said to be almost entirely unknown at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and the completion of our knowledge of its form and extent may justly be regarded as one of the greatest and most important occurrences to geography contributed by the eighteenth century.

The truth and justice of these observations will, we trust, convince our readers, that, in determining to be more general and concise in what remains of the geographical portion of our works, we shall not be destroying its consistency or altering the nature of its plan, but in fact preserving both; for its great object and design was to trace geographical knowledge from its infancy till it had reached that maturity and vigour, by which, in connection with the corresponding increased civilization, general information and commerce of the world, it was able to advance with rapid strides, and no longer confining itself to geography, strictly so called, to embrace the natural history of those countries, the existence, extent, and form of which it had first ascertained.

The great object and design of the commercial part of this work was similar; to trace the progress of commercial enterprises from the rudest ages of mankind, the changes and transfers it had undergone from one country to another, the causes and effects of these, as well as of its general gradual increase, till, having the whole of Europe under its influence, and aided by that knowledge and civilization with which it had mainly contributed to bless Europe, it had gained its maturity and vigour, and by its own expansive force pushed itself into every part of the globe, in which there existed any thing to attract it.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, commerce had not indeed assumed those features, or reached that form and dimensions by which it was distinguished at the end of this century; but as its dimensions gradually enlarge, it will be necessary to be less particular and more condensed.

Our plan indeed of being more minute in the early history of geographical science and commercial enterprise, is founded on an obvious as well as a just and important principle. In the infancy of geography and commerce, every fact is important, as reflecting light on the knowledge and state of mankind at that period, and as bearing on and conducing to their future progress; whereas when geography and commerce have been carried so far as to proceed in their course as it were by their own internal impulse, derived from the motion they have been acquiring for ages, their interest and importance is much diminished from this cause, as well as from the minuteness of the objects to which,--all the great ones having been previously occupied by them,--they must necessarily be confined.

Several circumstances co-operated to direct geographical discovery, during the eighteenth century, principally towards the north and north-east of Asia, and the north-west of America. The tendency and interest of the Russian empire to stretch itself to the east, and the hope still cherished by the more commercial and maritime nations of Europe, that a passage to the East Indies might be discovered, either by the north-east round Asia, or by the north-west, in the direction of Hudson's Bay, were among the most powerful of the causes which directed discovery towards those parts of the globe to which we have just alluded.

The extent of the Russian discoveries and conquests in the north and north-east of Asia, added much to geographical knowledge, though from the nature of the countries discovered and conquered, the importance of this knowledge is comparatively trifling. About the middle of the seventeenth century, they ascertained that the Frozen Ocean washed and bounded the north of Asia: the first Russian ship sailed down the river Lena to this sea in the year 1636. Three years afterwards, by pushing their conquests from one river to another, and from one rude and wandering tribe to another, they reached the eastern shores of Asia, not far distant from the present site of Ochotsk. Their conquests in this direction had occupied them nearly sixty years; and in this time they had annexed to their empire more than a fourth part of the globe, extending nearly eighty degrees in length, and in the north reaching to the 160° of east longitude; in breadth their conquests extended from the fiftieth to the seventy-fifth degree of north latitude. This conquest was completed by a Cossack; another Cossack, as Malte Brun observes, effected what the most skilful and enterprising of subsequent navigators have in vain attempted. Guided by the winds, and following the course of the tides, the current and the ice, he doubled the extremity of Asia from Kowyma to the river Anadyn. Kamschatcka, however, which is their principal settlement in the east of Asia, was not discovered till the year 1690; five years afterwards they reached it by sea from Ochotsk, but for a long time it was thought to be an island. The Kurile Islands were not discovered till the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The direction of discovery to this part of the world, as well as the plan by which it might be most advantageously and successfully executed, was given by Peter the Great, and affords one proof, that his mind was capacious, though his manners, morals, and conduct, might be those of a half-civilized tyrant. Peter did not live to carry his plan into execution: it was not, however, abandoned or neglected; for certainly the Russian government, much more than any other European government, seems to pursue with a most steady and almost hereditary predilection, all the objects which have once occupied its attention and warmed its ambition. On his death, his empress and her successors, particularly Anne and Elizabeth, contributed every thing in their power to carry his plan into full and complete execution. They went from Archangel to the Ob, from the Ob to the Jenesei. From the Jenesei they reached the Lena, partly by water and partly by land; from the Lena they went to the eastward as far as the Judigirka: and from Ochotsk they went by the Kurile Islands to Japan.

One of the most celebrated men engaged in the Russian discoveries in the early part of the eighteenth century was Behring: he was a Dane by birth, but in the service of Catherine, the widow of Peter the Great, who fixed upon him to carry into execution one of the most favourite plans of her husband. During Peter's residence in Holland, in the year 1717, the Dutch, who were still disposed to believe that a passage might be discovered to the East Indies in the northern parts of America, or Asia, urged the Emperor to send out an expedition to determine this point. There was also another point, less interesting indeed to commercial men, but on which geographers had bestowed much labour, which it was stated to the Emperor might be ascertained by the same expedition; this was, whether Asia and America were united, or divided by a sea, towards their northern extremities.

When Peter the Great returned to Russia, he resolved to attempt the solution of these problems; and with his own hand drew up a set of instructions for the proposed voyage; according to these, the vessels to be employed were to be built in Kamschatka; the unknown coasts of Asia and America were to be explored, and an accurate journal was to be kept.