he territory yielding tribute to the Russians, over
the yet unknown regions in the north-east.

Deschnev started on the 1st July, 1648, from the Kolyma in command
of one of the seven vessels (_Kotscher_),[11] manned with thirty
men, of which the expedition consisted. Concerning the fate of four
of these vessels we have no information. It is probable that they
turned back, and were not lost, as several writers have supposed;
three, under the command of the Cossacks, Deschnev and Ankudinov,
and the fur-hunter, Kolmogorsov, succeeding in reaching Chutskojnos
through what appears to have been open water. Here Ankudinov's
vessel was shipwrecked; the men, however, were saved and divided
among the other two, which were speedily separated. Deschnev
continued his voyage along the east coast of Kamschatka to the
Anadir, which was reached in October. Ankudinov is also supposed to
have reached the mouth of the Kamschatka River, where he settled
among the natives and finally died of scurvy.

The year following (1649) Staduchin sailed again, for seven days,
eastward from the Kolyma to the neighbourhood of Chutskojnos, in an
open sea, so far as we can gather from the defective account.
Deschnev's own opinion of the possibility of navigating this sea may
be seen from the fact, that, after his own vessel was lost, he had
timber collected at the Anadir for the purpose of building new ones.
With these he intended to send to Yakoutsk the tribute of furs which
he had received from the natives. He was, however, obliged to desist
from his project by an easily understood want of materials for the
building of the new vessels; he remarks also in connection with this
that the sea round Chutskojnos is not free of ice every year.

A number of voyages from the Siberian rivers northward, were also
made after the founding of Nischni Kolymsk, by Michael Staduchin in
1644 in consequence of the reports which were current among the
natives at the coast, of the existence of large inhabited islands,
rich in walrus tusks and mammoth bones, in the Siberian Polar Sea.
Often disputed, but persistently taken up by the hunting races,
these reports have finally been verified by the discovery of the
islands of New Siberia, of Wrangel's Land, and of the part of North
America east of Behring's Straits, whose natural state gave occasion
to the golden glamour of tradition with which the belief of the
common people incorrectly adorned the bleak, treeless islands in t