Note 1 — Chapter XXIV · THE LENA.

I allude to the accounts of Strahlenberg, De Lesseps, Billings, Ledyard, Dobell, Gordon, Cochrane, Erman, Cotterill, and Hill.

Strahlenberg was a Swedish officer, who, at the beginning of the 18th century, was banished for 13 years to Siberia. He collected a vast amount of information concerning the country generally, and compiled polyglot tables of aboriginal languages, and amongst them that of the Yakutes inhabiting the valley of the Lena, of whose Pagan condition he gives many illustrations.

M. de Lesseps was French Consul and interpreter to Count de la Perouse, the well-known circumnavigator. De Lesseps entered the country at Kamchatka in 1788, and wrote an account of his travels across Siberia and Europe to Paris.

Captain Billings was an Englishman, who, after sailing with the celebrated Captain Cook, was employed by the Empress Katharine II. to make discoveries on the north-east coast of Siberia, and among the islands in the Eastern Ocean stretching to the American coast. For this purpose he proceeded to North-Eastern Siberia in 1785, sailed down the river Kolima, explored a portion of the country eastward, and then returned by way of Yakutsk.

Another of Captain Cook’s officers, John Ledyard, had the most romantic enthusiasm for adventure, perhaps, of any man of his time. He conceived the project of travelling across Europe, Asia, and America as far as possible on foot, and to this end he set out from London with about £50 only in his pocket. He reached Yakutsk, where he met with Captain Billings, and with him was hoping to proceed to America, when, by order of the Russian Court, Ledyard was arrested on suspicion of being a French spy, and was taken off to Moscow.

Another journey across Northern Asia was made after the time of Billings by Peter Dobell, a counsellor of the Court of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Russia. Dobell landed in Kamchatka in 1812, and from thence proceeded overland to Europe.