amphlets, contains also
Isak Massa's map of the coast of the Polar Sea between the Kola
peninsula and the Pjaesina, which I have reproduced. ]
[Footnote 298: It is a peculiar circumstance that the vanguard of the
Russian stream of emigration which spread over Siberia, advanced
along the northernmost part of the country by the Tas, Turuchansk,
Yakutsk, Kolyma, and Anadyrsk. This depended in the first place
upon the races living there having less power of resistance against
the invaders, who were often very few in number, than the tribes
in the south, but also on the fact that the most precious and
most transportable treasures of Siberia--sable, beaver, and
fox-skins--were obtained in greatest quantity from these northern
regions. ]
[Footnote 299: Flat-bottomed, half-decked boats, twelve fathoms in
length. The planks were fastened by wooden pins, the anchors were
pieces of wood with large stones bound to them, the rigging of
thongs, and the sails often of tanned reindeer hides (J.E. Fischer,
_Sibirische Geschichte_, St. Petersburg, 1768, i. p. 517). ]
[Footnote 300: G.P. Mueller, _Sammlung Russischer Geschichte_, St.
Petersburg, 1758 Mueller asserts in this work that it was he who, in
1736, first drew from the repositories of the Yakutsk archives the
account of Deschnev's voyage, which before that time was known
neither at the court of the Czar nor in the remotest parts of
Siberia. This, however, is not quite correct, for long before
Mueller, the Swedish prisoner-of-war, Strahlenberg, knew that the
Russians travelled by sea from the Kolyma to Kamchatka, which
appears from his map of Asia, constructed during his stay in
Siberia, and published in _Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa
und Asia_, Stockholm, 1730. On this map there is the following
inscription in the sea north of the Kolyma--"Hie Rutheni ab initio
per Moles glaciales, quae flante Borea ad Littora, flanteque Anstro
versus Mare iterum pulsantur, magno Labore et Vitae Discrimine
transvecti sunt ad Regionem Kamtszatkam." ]
[Footnote 301: Selivestrov had accompanied Staduchin during his Polar
Sea voyage, and had, at his instance, been sent out to collect
walrus tusks on account of the State. He appears to have come to
the Anadyr by land. ]
[Footnote 302: Strahlenberg must have collected the main details of
this voyage by oral communications from Russian hunters and
traders. ]
[Footnote 303: According to Mueller Krascheninnikov (_Histoire et
descr
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