THE ARCTIC EXPEDITIONS.--THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE.--SEVERE CRITICISMS ON
NORDENSKJÖLD.
The Arctic expeditions made during the period from 1734 to 1743 have
only in part any connection with the object of this work. These
expeditions were, it is true, planned by Bering, and it was due to
his activity and perseverance that they were undertaken. He secured
vessels, men, and means, and had charge of the first unsuccessful
attempt; he was responsible to the government, and in his zeal went
just as far as his instructions would allow him. But his own special
task soon taxed his time too heavily to permit him to assume charge of
the Arctic expeditions. They were not carried out until several years
after his departure from Yakutsk,--after he had ceased to be their
leader. We have already shown Bering's important relation to them,
something which has never before been done in West European literature.
Hence our object, namely, to give Bering his dues, may therefore best
be accomplished by giving a short account of the results achieved by
these expeditions.
The world has never witnessed a more heroic geographical
enterprise than these Arctic expeditions. In five or six different
directions--from the Petchora, the Obi, the Yenesei, and the Lena--the
unknown coasts of the Old World were attacked.[61] For a whole decade
these discoverers struggled with all the obstacles which a terrible
climate and the resources of a half developed country obliged them
to contend with. They surmounted these obstacles. The expeditions
were renewed, two, three, yes, even four times. If the vessels were
frozen in, they were hauled upon shore the next spring, repaired, and
the expedition continued. And if these intrepid fellows were checked
in their course by masses of impenetrable ice, they continued their
explorations on dog sledges, which here for the first time were
employed in Arctic exploration. Cold, scurvy, and every degree of
discomfort wrought sad havoc among them, but many survived the long
polar winter in miserable wooden huts or barracks. Nowhere has Russian
hardiness erected for itself a more enduring monument.
It was especially the projecting points and peninsulas in this region
that caused these explorers innumerable difficulties. These points
and capes had hitherto been unknown. The crude maps of this period
represented the Arctic coast of Siberia as almost a straight line. It
was first necessary for the navigators to send cartographers to these
regions, build beacons and sea-marks, establish magazines, collect
herds of reindeer, which, partly as an itinerant food supply, and
partly to be used as an eventual means of conveyance, followed along
the coast with the vessels, while here and there, especially on the
Taimyr peninsula, small fishing stations were established for supplying
the vessels.
In the summer of 1737 Malygin and Skuratoff crossed the Kara Sea and
sailed up the Gulf of Obi. In the same year the able Ofzyn charted the
coast between the Obi and the Yenesei, but was reduced to the rank of
a common sailor, because in Berezov he had sought the company of the
exiled Prince Dolgoruki.
In the year previous, Pronchisheff all but succeeded in doubling the
Taimyr peninsula, and reached the highest latitude (77° 29') that
had been reached by water before the Vega expedition. But it was
especially in the second attempt, from 1738 to 1743, that the greatest
results were attained. The two cousins, Chariton and Dmitri Laptjef,
who were equipped anew and vested with great authority, attacked the
task of doubling the Taimyr and Bering peninsulas with renewed vigor.
By extensive sledging expeditions, the former linked his explorations
to those undertaken by Minin and Sterlegoff from the west, and his
mate, Chelyuskin, in 1742, planted his feet on the Old World's most
northerly point, and thus relegated the story of a certain Jelmerland,
said to connect northern Asia with Novaia Zemlia, to that lumber-room
which contains so many ingenious cartographical ideas. But even these
contributions to science were, perhaps, surpassed by those of Dmitri
Laptjef. As Lassenius's successor he charted, in three summers, the
Siberian coast from the Lena to the great Baranoff Cliff, a distance of
thirty-seven degrees. On this coast, toward the last, he found himself
in a narrow strait, from ten to twenty yards wide, and he did not stop
until there was scarcely a bucketful of water between the polar ice and
the rocky shore. But Cape Schelagskii, on the northeast coast, where
Deshneff a century before had shown the way, he did not succeed in
doubling.
As a result of the labors of this great Northern Expedition,
the northern coast of the Old World got substantially the same
cartographical outline that it now has. The determinations of latitude
made by the Russian officers were very accurate, but those of
longitude, based on nautical calculations, were not so satisfactory.
Their successors, Wrangell, Anjou, Middendorff, and even Nordenskjöld,
have therefore found opportunity to make corrections of but minor
importance, especially in regard to longitude.
But it is necessary to dwell a little longer on these expeditions.
Their principal object was not so much the charting of northern Siberia
as the discovery and navigation of the Northeast passage. From this
point of view alone they must be considered. This is the connecting
thought, the central point in these scattered labors. They were an
indirect continuation of the West European expeditions for the same
purpose, but far more rational than these. For this reason Bering
had, on his expedition of reconnoissance (1725-30), first sought that
thoroughfare between the two hemispheres without which a Northeast and
a Northwest passage could not exist. For this reason also he had, on
his far-sighted plan, undertaken the navigation of the Arctic seas,
where this had not already been done by Deshneff, and for this same
reason the Admiralty sought carefully to link their explorations to the
West European termini, on the coast of Novaia Zemlia as well as Japan.
Moreover, the discovery of a Northeast passage was the _raison d'être_
of these expeditions.
This alone promised the empire such commercial and political advantages
that the enormous expenditures and the frightful hardships which these
expeditions caused Siberia, might be justified. For this reason the
government, summer after summer, drove its sailors on along the Taimyr
and Bering peninsulas; for this reason, in 1740, it enjoined upon D.
Laptjef to make a last attempt to double northeast Asia from Kamchatka,
and this would undoubtedly have been accomplished if the unfortunate
death of Bering had not occurred shortly after;[62] and for this
reason, also, the government caused the charting of the coast by land
after all nautical attempts had miscarried.
Any extended documentary proof of the correctness of this view must be
considered unnecessary. The instructions expressly state the object
of the expedition: to ascertain with certainty whether vessels could
find a passage or not. Müller says the same. Scholars like Middendorff,
Von Baer, and Dr. Petermann look upon these expeditions from the same
standpoint, and have seen fit to give them the place of honor among all
the geographical efforts in the Northeast passage.[63] Some Swedish
scholars alone have found it necessary to maintain a different view.
Dr. A. Stuxberg and Prof. Th.
M. Fries in Upsala have published accounts of the history of the
Northeast passage, in which not a word about these expeditions is
found. Between the days of Vlaming and Cook, from 1688 until 1778, they
find nothing to be said of explorations in this part of the world, and
the charting of these waters does not, in their opinion, seem to have
any connection with the history of the Northeast passage. Prof. Fries
attempts to justify this strange method of treatment by the assertion
that those expeditions did not seek the navigation of the Northeast
passage, and did not undertake to sail a ship from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. But what authority, what historical foundation, have such
assertions? Simply because the Russians parceled out this work and
went at it in a sensible manner; because they did not loudly proclaim
their intention to sail directly from the Dwina to Japan; because
they had been instructed by the visionary and fatal attempts of West
Europe,--yes, one is almost tempted to say, just because those Russian
expeditions alone are of any importance in the early history of the
passage, the Swedish historians pass them by; Prof. Fries has even
ventured the assertion that the discovery of the Northeast passage by
these Russian expeditions, one hundred and thirty-seven years before
Nordenskjöld, is a discovery hitherto unsurmised by anyone but the
author of this work. I am not disposed to wrangle about words, and
still less to interfere with anyone's well-earned privileges. By
the discovery of the Northeast passage, I understand that work of
geographical exploration, that determination of the distribution of
land and water along the northern boundary of the Old World, that
traversing and charting of the coast which showed the existence of the
passage, but not the nautical utilization of it. This is the European
interpretation of this question. In any other sense McClure did not
discover the Northwest passage. If it is permissible to speak of the
discovery of the Northeast passage after the time of Bering and the
Great Northern Expedition, it is equally permissible to speak of the
discovery of the Northwest passage after the time of the great English
expeditions. If some future Nordenskjöld should take it into his head
to choose these waters as the scene of some great nautical achievement,
McClure, according to Prof. Fries's historical maxims, could not even
find a place in the history of this passage, for it was not his object
to sail a ship around the north of the New World. I very much doubt,
however, that the Professor would in such a case have the courage to
apply his maxims.
Nor does Baron Nordenskjöld concede to the Great Northern Expedition
a place in the history of the Northeast passage. The "Voyage of the
Vega" is an imposing work, and was written for a large public, but
even the author of this work has not been able to rise to an unbiased
and just estimate of his most important predecessors. His presentation
of the subject of Russian explorations in the Arctic regions, not
alone Bering's work and that of the Great Northern Expedition, but
also Wrangell's, Lütke's, and Von Baer's, is unfair, unsatisfactory,
inaccurate, and hence misleading in many respects. Nordenskjöld's book
comes with such overpowering authority, and has had such a large
circulation, that it is one's plain duty to point out palpable errors.
Nordenskjöld is not very familiar with the literature relating to
this subject. He does not know Berch's, Stuckenberg's, or Sokoloff's
works. Middendorff's and Von Baer's clever treatises he uses only
incidentally. He has restricted himself to making extracts from
Wrangell's account, which in many respects is more than incomplete,
and does not put these expeditions in the right light. It is now a
couple of generations since Wrangell's work was written, which is more
a general survey than an historical presentation. While Nordenskjöld
devotes page after page to an Othere's, an Ivanoff's, and a Martinier's
very indifferent or wholly imaginary voyages around northern Norway,
he disposes of the Great Northern Expedition, without whose labors
the voyage of the Vega would have been utterly impossible, in five
unhappily written pages. One seeks in vain in his work for the
principal object of the Northern Expedition,--for the leading idea that
made these magnificent enterprises an organic whole, or for a full and
just recognition of these able, and, in some respects, unfortunate
men, whose labors have so long remained without due appreciation. In
spite of Middendorff's interesting account of the cartography of the
Taimyr peninsula, Nordenskjöld does not make the slightest attempt
to explain whether his corrections of the cartography of this region
are corrections of the work of Laptjef and Chelyuskin, or of the
misrepresentations of their work made by a later age.
About the charting of Cape Chelyuskin he says: "This was done by
Chelyuskin in 1742 on a new sledging expedition, the details of which
are but little known; evidently because until the most recent times
there has been a doubt in regard to Chelyuskin's statement that he had
reached the most northerly point of Asia. After the voyage of the Vega,
however, there can no longer be any doubt."[64]
The truth is, ever since 1843,[65] when Middendorff published the
preliminary account of his expedition to the Taimyr peninsula, no doubt
has prevailed that all who are familiar with Russian literature, or
even with German literature, on this subject, have long since been
convinced of the fact that the most northern point of Asia was visited
and charted a century and a half ago,--that the details of Chelyuskin's
expedition, so far from being unknown, are those parts of the work of
the Northern Expedition which have been most thoroughly investigated
and most often presented. Nordenskjöld's recognition of Chelyuskin's
work comes thirty-eight years too late; it has already been treated
with quite a different degree of thoroughness than by the few words
expended on it in the "Voyage of the Vega." In 1841, Von Baer accused
Chelyuskin of having dishonestly given the latitude of the most
northerly point of Asia, and these charges Nordenskjöld prints as late
as 1881 without any comment whatever. If he had only seen Von Baer's
magazine for 1845[66] he would there have found the most unreserved
retraction of them and most complete restitution to Chelyuskin on
the part of Von Baer, and would thus have escaped ascribing to a man
opinions which he renounced a generation ago. Middendorff is likewise
very painstaking in presenting the history of these measurements,
and is open and frank in his praise. He says: "In the spring of 1742
Chelyuskin crowned his work by sailing from the Khatanga River around
the eastern Taimyr peninsula and also around the most northerly point
of Asia. He is the only one who a century ago had succeeded in reaching
and doubling this promontory. The fact that among many he alone was
successful in this enterprise, must be attributed to his great ability.
On account of his perseverance, as well as his careful and exact
measurements, he stands preëminent among seamen who have labored in
the Taimyr country." And furthermore, in 1785, Sokoloff published a
very careful and extensive account of these labors, together with an
extract from Chelyuskin's diary relating to the charting of the Taimyr
peninsula, which later was published in German by Dr. Petermann.[67]
The difference in latitude of the northern point of the Taimyr
peninsula as determined by Chelyuskin and by Nordenskjöld is scarcely
three minutes.[68]
FOOTNOTES:
[61] Middendorff gives the following interesting outline of these
expeditions:
From Petchora to the Obi: From the Obi:
-----------------------
Muravjoff and Pavloff. Westward: Eastward:
Malygin and Skuratoff. Golovin. Ofzyn.
Minin.
Koscheleff.
From the Yenesei: From the Lena:
------------------------
Eastward: Westward: Eastward:
Minin. Pronchisheff. Lassenius.
Chariton Laptjef. Dmitri Laptjef.
[62] Note 47.
[63] Note 48.
[64] Note 49.
[65] Note 50.
[66] Note 51.
[67] Note 52.
[68] On his review of my book in the _Journal of the American
Geographical Society_, XVII., p. 288, Baron Nordenskjöld says: "Mr.
Lauridsen has devoted nearly two pages to showing that I am wrong in
what I have said of Chelyuskin--that 'up to a recent date the statement
that he really did reach the northern point of Asia was doubted.' But
I had certainly the right to say this. If a person in 1742 performed
one of the heroic deeds of geography without having received any
acknowledgment for it in his lifetime, and if the best authorities
in this person's own country a century later still considered him an
impostor, I was surely justified in giving the above-quoted opinion in
1880, in spite of the fact that two eminent geographical authorities
have withdrawn their charges. Moreover, is it really the case that
Sokoloff's and Von Baer's later writings made it impossible to revive
the old charge? He who can assert this must be but slightly acquainted
with the history of geography, and with that of Siberian geography
above all." In a note Nordenskjöld adds: "Previous to the departure of
the Vega from Sweden, I received a letter from an unknown well-wisher
to our voyage, cautioning me not to put too much faith in the
Chelyuskin exploration story, as the writer of the letter considered
it fictitious." To the Baron's criticism I shall simply remark: I
have shown in the text that when he wrote the "Voyage of the Vega"
he was not familiar with the latest works on this question. Hence he
has been entirely unable to decide whether the old doubts concerning
Chelyuskin's results could be revived or not. I appeal to all students
of these finer points in the history of geography, who will certainly
agree with my statement that the Baron in this question has absolutely
no other support than that of an anonymous letter!--_Author's Note to
American Edition._