Three Accounts of the Vasil'ev-Shismarev Expedition of 1819-1822

3001 Veazey Terrace N. W. #317 Washington, D. C. 20008 9 July 1970

Mr. Edward Connery Lathem Librarian of the College Dartmouth College Library Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

Dear Mr. Lathem:

I was delighted to get your letter of 2 July yesterday with your encouraging news, and as soon as I can get together with Mrs. Jo -sephson, I shall send you copies of original pages with translations. Because so little of this particular journey was needed for my exact geographic area, we translated most of the applicable parts orally after I had read through the articles. We shall, therefore, write down various parts for your consideration.

When I send you the pages and translations, I shall also send the exact pages with approximate number of words, although I think it is around 48,000 words. Adding an introduction and explanatory notes might put it somewhere around 55,000 words, although this is just a rough guess. If the project meets with your approval, the translation and tping costs will not exceed $750.00. I do not expect any compensation for my editing of Mrs. Josephson's translation or for writing introductory material or notes. I will just be happy to see it published as an addition to our knowledge of the north, and would be very much interested in your exploring publication possibilities if it meets your expectations.

Here is the history of this project, and an outline of the material to be included so that you will know its exact scope and can further form an opinion about it.

Working up this material has been somewhat like following a detective story. I have been gathering material for an ethnohistory of the Bering Strait Eskimos for about 10 years, but the writing has been considerably slowed by writing numerous other papers and books, not mention taking time out to learn to read Russian. This was necessary because I am utilizing explorers' first-hand observations of early Eskimo life, and a number of these accounts were untranslated. After I had gained a certain control over the Russian I set out to track down the voyages mentioned casually in some of the general histories of Alaska. I have had no success in some quarters, but (I think!) a spectacular success with Vasiliev's and Shishmarev's expedition, which started out from Europe in 1819 and spent the years 1820 and 1821 in the arctic as far north as Icy Cape, Alaska.