History of Alaska - 1886 Author:Hubert Howe Bancroft Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and was told by her that Fcdot and Ankudinof had been wrecked and that both had died of scurvy among the Koriaks.1 No mention is made by any of this party of hav... more »ing seen the American continent, though it is not impossible that some of them did see it. They were obliged to hug the Asiatic shore, and the opposite coast can be seen from there only on a clear day. Another account of Deshnefs voyage places it at a still earlier date, between 1580 and 1590, but the inaccuracy of this is evident.2 Last of all this region to be unveiled was that narrow south-eastern strip of Siberia, the Kamchatka peninsula, which, about the size and shape of Italy, projects six hundred geographical miles from the continent into Bering and Okhotsk seas. The Cossack Luka Morosko started from Anadirsk in 1669 with a roving band and penetrated far to the southward, but what he saw was not known until some time afterward. The name Kamchatka was known in Yakutsk by report from 1690. Some years later the first party of riders set out thither under the leadership of the Cossack colonel, Atlassof, who passes for the actual 1 The voyage of Peshnef was almost forgotten when Mnller found a record of it in Kolimsk. Morakoi Sbornik, 17G4, 37-49; Jtffi-ry' Mutter's Voy., v.-ix. ' An anonymous article in a literary monthly published in St Petersburg in 1709 contains the following: 'The honor of having taken the first stops toward the discovery of these new islands (which on account of their number may justly be termed an archipelago) belongs to the tsar Ivan Vassilievich II. After having conquered the whole of Siberia he desired to know its boundaries north and cast, and the tribes inhabiting those far-off regions. For this purpose lie sent out mi expedition, which only returned during the reign of his son a...« less