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estimated its length from west to east too small by forty
degrees.
From the fort on the Anadyr, Kamchatka was
conquered in the first years of the eighteenth century, and
from here came the first information concerning America.
In 1711 the Cossack Popoff visited the Chukchee
peninsula, and here he heard that from either side of the
peninsula, both from the “Kolymaic” Sea and the Gulf
of Anadyr, an island could be seen in the distance, which
the Chukchees called “the great land.” This land they
said they could reach in baidars (boats rowed by women)
in one day. Here were found large forests of pine,
cedar, and other trees, and also many different kinds of
animals not found in their country. This reliable
information concerning America seems at the time to have
been known in other parts of Siberia only in the way of
vague reports, and was soon confused with descriptions of
islands in the Arctic.
Czar Peter, however, soon laid his adjusting hand
upon these groping efforts. By the aid of Swedish
prisoners of war, he opened the navigation from Okhotsk to
Kamchatka, and thus avoided the circuitous route by way
of the Anadyr. A Cossack by the name of Ivan
Kosyrefski (the son of a Polish officer in Russian captivity) was
ordered to explore the peninsula to its southern
extremity, and also some of the Kurile Islands. In 1719
he officially despatched the surveyors Yevrinoff and
Lushin to ascertain whether Asia and America were
connected, but secretly he instructed them to go to the
Kurile Islands to search for precious metals, especially a
white mineral which the Japanese were said to obtain in
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