mss142-vasilevShishmarev-i1-006

2 This expedition has received almost no attention in our English histories of [[Alaska]], and so far I have not seen it mentioned in the Russian. [[Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918|Bancroft]] (p. 526) said, "No report of the expedition is extant," and neither [[Andrews, Clarence Leroy, 1862-1948|Andrews]] (The Story of Alaska) or [[Hulley, Clarence Charles, 1907-|Hulley]] (Alaska, 1741-1953) mention it at all. [[Dall, William Healey, 1845-1927|Dall]] in Alaska and its History devotes only 62 words to it, without documentation, in a chronological listing of historical events (pp. 331, 332). My first step in this search was to consult the Arctic Biblio- graphy, which did not yield any results. My next step was to consult [[Wickersham]]'s Bibliography of Alaskan Literature, 1724- 1924, where I found three items, Nos. 6287, 6291, and 6292 per- taining to the journey. The first one is the long account that I mentioned in my letter to [[Peter]]-- an account of the two-year voyage of the Good Intent written by [[Hillsen, Karl Karlovich|K. K. Hillsen]], who was under [[Shishmarev, Gleb Semyonovich, 1781-1835|Shish- marev]]. It contains valuable ethnographic and historic information about [[Alaska]], [[St. Lawrence Island|St. Lawrence Island]] and [[Siberia]]. The second item contains only progress reports in 1820 of a few pages. No. 6292, I discovered, is a considerably shortened version of [[Hillsen, Karl Karlovich|Hillsen]]'s account written in German. Of the above, we shall translate the [[Hillsen, Karl Karlovich|Hillsen]] article and the progress reports, but there are two other articles that I want to include , and which I found purely by accident. During my incarceration in the [[Library of Congress]] last fall I checked the tables of contents of all journals that I thought might contain articles about the expe- ditions to [[Bering Strait]]: Morskoi Sbornik, Otechestvennye zapiski - under. 6287 Hillsen set in this (in which [[Hillsen, Karl Karlovich|Hillsen]]'s three-part article appeared), Sievernyi arkhiv, Vasiliev in this under 6291 -Syn otechestva, and Zapiski Gidrograficheskago Departamenta, etc., and the more recent journals and state and national ethnographic and historical series. In Zapiski Gidr. Dep. for 1851 I found the article, "Svedeniia o Chukchakh, Capt. [[Shishmarev, Gleb Semyonovich, 1781-1835|Shishmarev]]," which contains his observations of the [[Chukchi|Chukchi]] in his journey of 1821. Then, by pure change, I discovered [[Berkh, Vasiliĭ Nikolaevich, 1781-1834|Vassili Berkh]]'s Khronologicheskaia istoriia vsiekh puteshestvii v sievernyia poliarnyia strany (Chrono- logical history of all voyages to the Arctic), volumes I and II, 1821, 1823, in an uncatalogued collection of books that had come to the [[Smithsonian Libraries]] from [[Dall, William Healey, 1845-1927|William H. Dall]]'s estate. I had inquired about [[Dall, William Healey, 1845-1927|Dall]]'s manuscript collection, now in the [[Smithsonian]], and the librarian Mr. [[Marquardt, Jack|Marquardt]] gave me permission to look through [[Dall, William Healey, 1845-1927|Dall]]'s wonderful collection of books, which has now been broken up and is in the process of being catalogued. I had never heard of this publication before ([[Berkh, Vasiliĭ Nikolaevich, 1781-1834|Berkh]]'s history of the discovery of the Aleutians is well known and has even been translated). In volume two of the Chronological history of the voyages are good summaries of various northern expenditions up to the date of publication, including [[Vasil'ev, Mikhail Nikolayevich, 1770-1847|Vasiliev]]'s and [[Shishmarev, Gleb Semyonovich, 1781-1835|Shishmarev]]'s two-year voyage. At that time I had not see [[Lada-Mocarski, Valerian, 1898-1971|Lada-Mocarski]]'s Bibliography of Books on