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seas, where this had not already been done by Deshneff,
and for this same reason the Admiralty sought carefully
to link their explorations to the West European termini,
on the coast of Novaia Zemlia as well as Japan.
Moreover, the discovery of a Northeast passage was the raison
d’être of these expeditions.
This alone promised the empire such commercial
and political advantages that the enormous
expenditures and the frightful hardships which these
expeditions caused Siberia, might be justified. For this
reason the government, summer after summer, drove
its sailors on along the Taimyr and Bering
peninsulas; for this reason, in 1740, it enjoined upon
D. Laptjef to make a last attempt to double
northeast Asia from Kamchatka, and this would
undoubtedly have been accomplished if the unfortunate death
of Bering had not occurred shortly after;[1] and for this
reason, also, the government caused the charting of the
coast by land after all nautical attempts had miscarried.
Any extended documentary proof of the correctness of
this view must be considered unnecessary. The
instructions expressly state the object of the expedition: to
ascertain with certainty whether vessels could find a
passage or not. Müller says the same. Scholars like
Middendorff, Von Baer, and Dr. Petermann look upon
these expeditions from the same standpoint, and have
seen fit to give them the place of honor among all the
geographical efforts in the Northeast passage.[2] Some
Swedish scholars alone have found it necessary to
maintain a different view. Dr. A. Stuxberg and Prof. Th.
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