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of the Old World, that traversing and charting of the
coast which showed the existence of the passage, but
not the nautical utilization of it. This is the European
interpretation of this question. In any other sense
McClure did not discover the Northwest passage. If it is
permissible to speak of the discovery of the Northeast
passage after the time of Bering and the Great Northern
Expedition, it is equally permissible to speak of the
discovery of the Northwest passage after the time of the
great English expeditions. If some future Nordenskjöld
should take it into his head to choose these waters as
the scene of some great nautical achievement, McClure,
according to Prof. Fries’s historical maxims, could not
even find a place in the history of this passage, for it
was not his object to sail a ship around the north of
the New World. I very much doubt, however, that the
Professor would in such a case have the courage to
apply his maxims.
Nor does Baron Nordenskjöld concede to the Great
Northern Expedition a place in the history of the
Northeast passage. The “Voyage of the Vega” is an imposing
work, and was written for a large public, but even the
author of this work has not been able to rise to an
unbiased and just estimate of his most important
predecessors. His presentation of the subject of Russian
explorations in the Arctic regions, not alone Bering’s
work and that of the Great Northern Expedition, but
also Wrangell’s, Lütke’s, and Von Baer’s, is unfair,
unsatisfactory, inaccurate, and hence misleading in
many respects. Nordenskjöld’s book comes with such
overpowering authority, and has had such a large
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