Several circumstances co-operated to direct geographical discovery, during
the eighteenth century, principally towards the north and north-east of
Asia, and the north-west of America. The tendency and interest of the
Russian empire to stretch itself to the east, and the hope still cherished
by the more commercial and maritime nations of Europe, that a passage to
the East Indies might be discovered, either by the north-east round Asia,
or by the north-west, in the direction of Hudson's Bay, were among the most
powerful of the causes which directed discovery towards those parts of the
globe to which we have just alluded.
The extent of the Russian discoveries and conquests in the north and
north-east of Asia, added much to geographical knowledge, though from the
nature of the countries discovered and conquered, the importance of this
knowledge is comparatively trifling. About the middle of the seventeenth
century, they ascertained that the Frozen Ocean washed and bounded the
north of Asia: the first Russian ship sailed down the river Lena to this
sea in the year 1636. Three years afterwards, by pushing their conquests
from one river to another, and from one rude and wandering tribe to
another, they reached the eastern shores of Asia, not far distant from the
present site of Ochotsk. Their conquests in this direction had occupied
them nearly sixty years; and in this time they had annexed to their empire
more than a fourth part of the globe, extending nearly eighty degrees in
length, and in the north reaching to the 160 deg.
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