Russia | Page 8

suffering shipwreck, was continued overland, resulting in the exploration of the Taimir peninsula and the discovery of the North Cape of the Old World, Pliny's Tabin, and the Cheluskin of modern maps, so named from the pilot who accompanied Pronchishchev and Laptiev. The western seaboard between the Yenisei and Ob estuaries had already been surveyed by Ovtzin and Minin in 1737-9.
But the problem was already being attacked from the side of the Pacific Ocean. In 1728, the Danish navigator, Bering, in the service of Russia, crossed Siberia overland to the Pacific, whence he sailed through the strait now named from him, and by him first revealed to the West, though known to the Siberian Cossacks eighty years previously. Even Bering himself, hugging the Asiatic coast, had not descried the opposite shores of America, and was uncertain as to the exact position of the strait. This point was not cleared up till Cook's voyage of 1778, and even after that the Sakhalin, Yezo and Kurile waters still remained to be explored. The shores of the mainland and islands were first traced by La Pérouse, who determined the insular character of Sakhalin, and ascertained the existence of a strait connecting the Japanese Sea with that of Okhotsk. This completed the general survey of the whole Siberian seaboard.
The scientific exploration of the interior began in the Eighteenth Century with Messerschmidt, followed by Gmelin, Müller, and Delisle de la Croyère, who determined many important physical points between the years 1733 and 1742. The region stretching beyond Lake Baikal was explored by Pallas and his associates in 1770-3. The expeditions, interrupted by the great wars following on the French Revolution, were resumed in 1828 by the Norwegian Hansteen, whose memorable expedition in company with Erman had such important results for the study of terrestrial magnetism. While Hansteen and Erman were still prosecuting their labours in every branch of natural science, Alexander von Humboldt, Ehrenberg, and Gustav Rose made a short visit to Siberia, which, however, remained one of the most important in the history of science. Middendorff's journeys to North and East Siberia had also some very valuable results, and were soon followed, in 1854, by the "expedition to Siberia" undertaken by Schwartz, Schmidt, Glehn, Usoltzev, and associates, extending over the whole region of the Trans-baikal to the Lena and northern tributaries of the Amur. Thus began the uninterrupted series of modern journeys, which are now being systematically continued in every part of Siberia, and which promise soon to leave no blanks on the chart of that region.
The work of geographical discovery, properly so called, may be said to have been brought to a close by Nordenskj?ld's recent determination of the north-east passage, vainly attempted by Willoughby, Barents, and so many other illustrious navigators.
Such a vast region as Siberia, affected in the west by Atlantic, in the east by Pacific influences, and stretching north and south across 29° of latitude, must obviously present great diversities of climate. Even this bleak land has its temperate zones, which the Slav colonists are fond of calling their "Italies." Nevertheless as compared with Europe, Siberia may, on the whole, be regarded as a country of extreme temperatures--relatively great heats, and, above all, intense colds. The very term "Siberian" has justly become synonymous with a land of winds, frosts, and snows. The mean annual temperature in this region comprised between the rivers Anabara and Indigirka is 20° Fahr. below freezing point. The pole of cold, oscillating diversely with the force of the lateral pressure from Yakutsk to the Lena estuary, is the meteorological centre round which the atmosphere revolves. Here are to a large extent prepared the elements of the climate of West Europe.
Travellers speak of the Siberian winters with mingled feelings of terror and rapture. An infinite silence broods over the land--all is buried in deep sleep. The animals hibernate in their dens, the streams have ceased to flow, disappearing beneath the ice and snow; the earth, of a dazzling whiteness in the centre of the landscape, but grey in the distance, nowhere offers a single object to arrest the gaze. The monotony of endless space is broken by no abrupt lines or vivid tints. The only contrast with the dull expanse of land is the everlasting azure sky, along which the sun creeps at a few degrees only above the horizon. In these intensely cold latitudes it rises and sets with hard outlines, unsoftened by the ruddy haze elsewhere encircling it on the edge of the horizon. Yet such is the strength of its rays that the snow melts on the housetop exposed to its glare, while in the shade the temperature is 40° to 50° below freezing point. At night, when the firmament is not aglow with the many-tinted lights and silent coruscations of the aurora borealis,