The north-east passage to China was attempted as far back as the 16th century, after the discovery of America had given such zest to geographical exploration. Willoughby, Chancellor, and Burroughs started on a route indicated to them by Sebastian Cabot, but with the result that Willoughby perished in 1554; Chancellor landed in the White Sea and laid the foundation of Anglo-Russian commerce; and Burroughs was stopped before entering the Kara Sea. Thinking that China might, perhaps, be reached by way of the Obi gulf, thence up the river, and by a fabulous lake of Kitaï (or China) marked upon the map of Herberstein, the English renewed their efforts. In 1580 two English ships, commanded by Pet and Jackman, sailed towards the Russian Polar Seas, their navigators being counselled by Hakluyt and Mercator, the foremost geographers of their day; but both were baffled by the ice of the Kara Sea. The Dutch were not more fortunate, and in the three voyages, in which the illustrious Barentz took part, 1594–1597, no progress was effected beyond the Seas of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. In 1608, the Dutch Hendrick Hudson, sailing in the English service, endeavoured but in vain to pass the limits where his predecessors had been stopped, and after his name should be mentioned those of Wood and Flawes, bringing us to 1676. There was subsequently a lull in the efforts made by the navigators of Western Europe for two centuries, and then we have the voyage in the Tegetthoff, under Payer and Weyprecht. The fishermen and Russian merchants from the White Sea, however, knew perfectly the route to the gulfs of the Obi and Yenesei. Of this there is proof in the map of Boris Godunof in the year 1600, although it is true that to travel by this route was forbidden sixteen years later under pain of death, lest the Russians should pilot foreigners to the coasts of Siberia.

Cut off thus by a frozen sea, the sailing of which was considered by the navigators and geographers of Western Europe an impossibility, the exploration of the North Siberian littoral could go on only from Siberia itself, which was done by means of river craft. In 1648, the Cossack Dejnev, leaving the mouth of the Kolima in command of a little fleet of seven boats, had succeeded in rounding the extreme northern point of Asia, and in clearing, long before Behring was born, the strait which bears the name of that navigator. Stadoukhin also traversed the seas of Eastern Siberia, looking for islands covered with fossil ivory, of which the natives had told him. In 1735 Prontchichtchev and Lasinius descended the Lena to examine its delta and coast along to the east and west. The former proceeded round Cape Cheliuskin (so named after his pilot), but did not reach the Yenesei Gulf, and the expedition brought back their leader’s corpse. Again, an expedition set out in 1739 under Laptev, and, after being shipwrecked, crossed overland the most northern cape of the Old World, and explored the Taimur peninsula. The littoral between the estuaries of the Obi and Yenesei was discovered two years previously by Ovtzin and Minin.

Navigation towards the Siberian Sea had already commenced, however, by way of the Pacific. In 1728 Behring, a Dane in the Russian service, crossed Siberia by land, and, embarking on the Pacific, penetrated the famous straits which bear his name, and it was through him that the geographers of Western Europe learned the existence of this passage, already known for eighty years to the Siberian Cossacks; but the archives of Yakutsk had so closely kept the secret that the great Peter himself did not know it when he charged Behring to go and explore the coasts of Eastern Siberia.

The explorations of Cook, in 1778, confirmed the points laid down by Behring, and added much to our knowledge of these north-eastern waters. After the voyage of Cook, only the seas about Sakhalin, Yesso, and the Kuriles remained to be explored. La Perouse laid down the first tracing of the islands and the shores of the continent, and he recognized the insular character of Sakhalin and the existence of a passage uniting the seas of Japan and Okhotsk.

Thus all the coast lines of Siberia were mapped out as to their principal features, and there matters remained until, at the instance of Mr. Sidoroff, in 1868, some Norwegian whalers ventured to the Kara Sea, which, however, was not successfully navigated, I believe, by an ocean craft till 1874, when Captain Wiggins accomplished it by steam. He reached the gulf of the Obi, and would willingly have steamed on to “the land of Kitaï,” but he was unsupported by such enterprise as sent out Willoughby, Chancellor, and Burroughs, and the rose was honorably snatched from the Englishman’s hand by Nordenskiöld, the Swedo-Finn, whose voyage may, in a manner, be said to have closed the maritime discovery of Siberia.

The scientific exploration of this vast country by land can hardly be said to have commenced till the 18th century, with Messerschmidt. Some years later, Gmelin, Müller, and Delisle de la Croyère, during an absence of nine years, from 1733 to 1742, recorded valuable observations on the physical geography of the country. In those days, however, the Russian Government regarded with considerable jealousy the publication of documents relative to the resources of the empire. Pallas travelled over Siberia to the Baikal and beyond, with several scientists, and brought back much valuable information, especially concerning geology and natural history. Scientific travels in Siberia were then suspended till after the political events of 1815. In 1828 the Norwegian Hansteen, accompanied by Erman, went on those travels which proved of such importance to the study of terrestrial magnetism, whilst Erman’s astronomical determinations were of great use in correcting the maps which hitherto had been only approximately correct. Humboldt went to Siberia when Hansteen and Erman were there; and though his visit, by reason of its shortness, was not very fruitful in observations, it proved important in the history of science, because he brought back documents which proved valuable for his work on Central Asia. The explorations of Middendorf in Northern and Eastern Siberia had considerable importance, and in 1854 Schwartz, Schmidt, Glehn, Usoltzoff, and their companions made a remarkable expedition, which explored the immense region stretching from the Za-Baikal to the Lena, including the northern affluents of the Amur.

These are some of the prominent names connected with the scientific exploration of Siberia in general. Several specialists also have pushed their way to various parts of the country—Castrén the philologist to the Samoyede country, 1842–3; Maack, Venyukoff, and Radde, to the Amur and Ussuri, 1854–9; Müller and Czekanovski to the country of the Chukchees, 1869–70, and to the Yenesei in 1873–4. Two years later Seebohm, the ornithologist, descended the Yenesei, as also did the Swedish expedition under Professor Théil; and in the same year Finsch, Brehm, and Zeil explored the basin of the Irtish and Obi. For the names of other travellers in Northern Asia the reader is referred to the Bibliography of Siberia, and list of works consulted, in the following appendix.

P.S.—This appendix was written before the publication of “The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, with an Historical Review of Previous Voyages along the North Coast of the Old World. By A. E. Nordenskiöld,” whose book will doubtless be regarded as a standard work, and to it, accordingly, the reader is referred for fuller information on the maritime coast of Siberia.