attempt
made by the navigators of West Europe; but the Russian traders
and fishers of the White Sea were familiar with the routes to the
Ob and Yenisei Gulfs, as is evident from a map published in 1600
by Boris Godunov. However, sixteen years afterwards the navigation
of these waters was interdicted under pain of death, lest foreigners
should discover the way to the Siberian coast.

[Illustration: SIBERIAN NATIVES.]

The exploration of this seaboard had thus to be prosecuted in Siberia
itself by means of vessels built for the river navigation. In 1648,
the Cossack Dejnev sailed with a flotilla of small craft from the
Kolima round the north-east extremity of Asia, passing long before
the birth of Bering through the strait which now bears the name
of that navigator. Stadukhin also explored these eastern seas in
search of the islands full of fossil ivory, of which he had heard
from the natives. In 1735, Pronchishchev and Lasinius embarked
at Yakutsk and sailed down the Lena, exploring its delta and
neighbouring coasts. Pronchishchev reached a point east of the
Taimir peninsula, but failed to double the headlands between the
Lena and the Yenisei estuaries. The expedition begun by Laptiev in
1739, after suffering shipwreck, was continued overland, resulting
in the exploration of the Taimir peninsula and the discovery of the
North Cape of the Old World, Pliny's Tabin, and the Cheluskin of
modern maps, so named from the pilot who accompanied Pronchishchev
and Laptiev. The western seaboard between the Yenisei and Ob estuaries
had already been surveyed by Ovtzin and Minin in 1737-9.

But the problem was already being attacked from the side of the
Pacific Ocean. In 1728, the Danish navigator, Bering, in the service
of Russia, crossed Siberia overland to the Pacific, whence he sailed
through the strait now named from him, and by him first revealed
to the West, though known to the Siberian Cossacks eighty years
previously. Even Bering himself, hugging the Asiatic coast, had
not descried the opposite shores of America, and was uncertain as
to the exact position of the strait. This point was not cleared
up till Cook's voyage of 1778, and even after that the Sakhalin,
Yezo and Kurile waters still remained to be explored. The shores
of the mainland and islands were first traced by La Perouse, who
determined the insular character of Sakhalin, and ascertained the
existence of a strait connecting the Japanese Sea with that of
Okhotsk