Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of Bering Strait / VII (1889) Author: Peter Lauridsen Table of Contents / Innehåll | << Previous | Next >>
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INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.

————

A BIOGRAPHY of the great Bering is of especial interest to
American readers desiring an accurate history of a country
that has recently come into our possession, and the adjoining
regions where most of the geographical investigations of the
intrepid Danish-Russian explorer were made. The thorough,
concise, and patient work done by Mr. Lauridsen is deserving of
world-wide commendation, while the translation into the language
of our land by Professor Olson of the University of Wisconsin puts
students of American historical geography under a debt for this
labor of love rather than remuneration that cannot be easily paid,
and which is not common in our country. It is a matter of no
small national pride that the translation into the English language
of a work so near American geographical interests should have
been done by an American, rather than emanate from the Hakluyt
Society or other British sources, from which we usually derive
such valuable translations and compilations of old explorations and
the doings of the first explorers.

The general American opinion regarding Bering is probably
somewhat different from that on the continent which gave him
birth and a patron government to carry out his gigantic and
immortal plans; or, better speaking, it was different during the
controversy in the past over the value and authenticity of the
great explorer’s works, for European opinion of Bering has slowly
been more and more favorable to him, until it has reached the
maximum and complete vindication in the admirable labors of
Lauridsen, whose painstaking researches in the only archives
where authentic data of the doings of the daring Dane could be
found, has left no ground for those critics to stand upon, who have

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