It was
possible for instance that Asia stretched with a cape as far as to
the neighbourhood of the Pole, or that a broad isthmus between the
Pjaesina and the Olenek connected the known portion of this quarter
of the world with an Asiatic Polar continent. Nor had geographers a
single actual determination of position or geographical measurement
from the whole of the immense stretch between the mouth of the Ob
and Japan, and there was complete uncertainty as to the relative
position of the easternmost possessions of the Russians on the one
side and of Japan on the other.[315] It was difficult to get the maps
of the Russians to correspond with those of the Portuguese and the
Dutch, at the point where the discoveries of the different nations
touched each other, which also was exceedingly natural, as at that
time too limited an extent east and west by 1700 kilometres was
commonly assigned to Siberia. In order to investigate this point, in
order to fill up the great blank which still existed in the
knowledge of the quarter of the world first inhabited by man, and
perhaps above all for the purpose of forming new commercial treaties
and of discovering new commercial routes, Peter the Great during the
latest years of his life arranged one of the greatest geographical
expeditions which the history of the world can show. It was not
until after his death, however, that it was carried out, and then it
went on for a series of years on so large a scale that whole tribes
are said to have been impoverished through the severe exactions of
transport that were on its account imposed on the inhabitants of the
Siberian deserts. Its many different divisions are now comprehended
under the name--_the Great Northern Expedition_. Through the
writings of Behring, Mueller, Gmelin, Steller, Krascheninnikov and
others, this expedition has acquired an important place for all time
in the history not only of geography but also of ethnography,
zoology, and botany, and even now the inquirer, when the natural
conditions of North Asia are in question, must return to these
works. I shall therefore, before drawing this chapter to a close,
give a brief account of its principal features.

The Great Northern Expedition was ushered in by "the first
expedition to Kamchatka". The commander of this expedition was the
Dane VITUS BEHRING, who was accompanied by Lieutenant MORTON
SPANGBERG, also a Dane by birth, and ALEXEI CHIRIKOV They left St.
Petersburg in Februar