ther Russian naval officer, FERDINAND VON WRANGEL,
accompanied by Dr. KUeBER, midshipman MATIUSCHKIN, and mate KOSMIN.
They too were unsuccessful in penetrating over the ice far from the
coast. Wrangel returned fully convinced that all the accounts which
were current in Siberia of the land he wished to visit, and which
now bears the name of Wrangel Land, were based on legends, mistake,
and intentional untruths. But Anjou and Wrangel did an important
service to Polar research by showing that the sea, even in the
neighbourhood of the Pole of cold, is not covered with any strong
and continuous sheet of ice, even at that season of the year when
cold reaches its maximum. By the attempts made nearly at the same
time by Wrangel and Parry to penetrate farther northwards, the one
from the north coasts of Siberia, and the other from those of
Spitzbergen, Polar travellers for the first time got a correct idea
how uneven and impassable ice is on a frozen sea, how little the way
over such a sea resembles the even polished surface of a frozen
lake, over which we dwellers in the north are accustomed to speed
along almost with the velocity of the wind. Wrangel's narrative at
the same time forms an important source of knowledge both of
preceding journeys and of the recent natural conditions on the north
coast of Asia, as is only too evident from the frequent occasions on
which I have quoted his work in my sketch of the voyage of the
_Vega_.

It remains for me now to enumerate some voyages from Behring's
Straits westward into the Siberian Polar Sea.

1778 _and_ 1779--During the third of his famous circumnavigations of
the globe JAMES COOK penetrated through Behring's Straits into the
Polar Sea, and then along the north-east coast of Asia westwards to
Irkaipij, called by him Cape North. Thus the honour of having
carried the first seagoing vessel to this sea also belongs to the
great navigator. He besides confirmed Behring's determination of the
position of the East Cape of Asia, and himself determined the
position of the opposite coast of America.[337] The same voyage was
approximately repeated the year after Cook's death by his successor
CHARLES CLARKE, but without any new discoveries being made in the
region in question.

1785-94.--The success which attended Cook in his exploratory voyages
and the information, unlooked for even by the Russian government,
which Coxe's work gave concerning the voyages of the Russian hunters
in the No