Читать книгу Vitus Bering: the Discoverer of Bering Strait - Peter Lauridsen - Страница 3

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A biography of the great Bering is of especial interest to American readers desiring an accurate history of a country that has recently come into our possession, and the adjoining regions where most of the geographical investigations of the intrepid Danish-Russian explorer were made. The thorough, concise, and patient work done by Mr. Lauridsen is deserving of world-wide commendation, while the translation into the language of our land by Professor Olson of the University of Wisconsin puts students of American historical geography under a debt for this labor of love rather than remuneration that cannot be easily paid, and which is not common in our country. It is a matter of no small national pride that the translation into the English language of a work so near American geographical interests should have been done by an American, rather than emanate from the Hakluyt Society or other British sources, from which we usually derive such valuable translations and compilations of old explorations and the doings of the first explorers.

The general American opinion regarding Bering is probably somewhat different from that on the continent which gave him birth and a patron government to carry out his gigantic and immortal plans; or, better speaking, it was different during the controversy in the past over the value and authenticity of the great explorer's works, for European opinion of Bering has slowly been more and more favorable to him, until it has reached the maximum and complete vindication in the admirable labors of Lauridsen, whose painstaking researches in the only archives where authentic data of the doings of the daring Dane could be found, has left no ground for those critics to stand upon, who have censured Peter the Great's selection of an oriental explorer. In short, America has always respected Bering as a great explorer, and oftentimes heralded him as one of the highest of heroes, whatever may have been the varying phases of European thought on the subject; and the reasons therefor, I think, are two-fold. In the first place, the continent which Bering first separated from the old world is yet a new country. Since its discovery, not only exploration, but commercial exploration, or pioneering as we call it, has been going on, and in this every one has taken his part or mingled often with those who have. Presidents who were pioneers, have been contemporaries with our times, while those who have struggled on the selvage of civilization are numerous among us, and their adventures as narrated in books are familiar stories to our ears. Such a people, I believe, am much less liable to listen to the labored logic of a critic against a man who carried his expedition six thousand miles across a wilderness and launched it on the inhospitable shores of an unknown sea, to solve a problem that has borne them fruit, than others not similarly situated would be. While the invariable rule has been that where the path-finder and critic—unless the critic has been an explorer in the same field—have come in collision, the latter has always gone to the wall, it is easy to see that with a jury that have themselves lived amidst similar, though possibly slighter, frontier fortunes, such a verdict is more readily reached.

The other reason, which is not so commendable, is that few Americans at large have interested themselves in the discussion, or in fact knew much about it. True, the criticisms on the Eastern continent have been re-echoed on this side of the water, and even added to, but, they have created no general impression worth recording as such in a book that will undoubtedly have far wider circulation than the discussion has ever had, unless I have misjudged the temper of the American people to desire information on just such work as Bering has done, and which for the first time is presented to them in anything like an authentic way by Professor Olson's translation of Mr. Lauridsen's work. I do not wish to be understood that we as a nation have been wholly indifferent to Bering and the discussion of his claims. Far from it. It has rather been that in invading the Bering world their disposition has led them to view the solid ground on which he made his mark, rather than the clouds hovering above, and which this work dissipates. It is rather of that character of ignorance—if so strong a word is justifiable—that is found here in the persistent misspelling of the great explorer's name and the bodies of water which have transmitted it to posterity so well, although the authority—really the absolute demand, if correctness is desired—for the change from Behring to Bering has been well known to exist for a number of years, and is now adopted in even our best elementary geographies. While the animalish axiom that "ignorance is bliss" is probably never true, there may be cases where it is apparently fortunate, and this may be so in that Americans in being seemingly apathetic have really escaped a discussion which after all has ended in placing the man considered in about the same status that they always assumed he had filled. One might argue that it would have been better for Americans, therefore, if they had been presented with a simple and authentic biography of the immortal Danish-Russian, rather than with a book that is both a biography and a defense, but Lauridsen's work after all is the best, I think all will agree, as no biography of Bering could be complete without some account of that part in which he had no making and no share, as well as that better part which he chronicled with his own brain and brawn.

I doubt yet if Americans will take very much interest in the dispute over Bering's simple claims in which he could take no part; but that this book, which settles them so clearly, will be welcomed by the reading classes of a nation that by acquisition in Alaska has brought them so near the field of the labor of Bering, I think there need not be the slightest fear. It is one of the most important links yet welded by the wisdom of man which can be made into a chain of history for our new acquisition whose history is yet so imperfect, and will remain so, until Russian archives are placed in the hands of those they consider fair-minded judges, as in the present work.

On still broader grounds, it is to be hoped that this work will meet with American success, that it may be an entering wedge to that valuable literature of geographical research and exploration, which from incompatibility of language and other causes has never been fully or even comprehensively opened to English speaking people. It has been well said by one who has opportunities to fairly judge that "it has been known by scientists for some time that more valuable investigation was buried from sight in the Russian language than in any or all others. Few can imagine what activity in geographical, statistical, astronomical, and other research has gone on in the empire of the Czar. It is predicted that within ten years more students will take up the Russian language than those of other nations of Eastern Europe, simply as a necessity. This youngest family of the Aryans is moving westward with its ideas and literature, as well as its population and empire. There are no better explorers and no better recorders of investigations." It is undoubtedly a field in which Americans can reap a rich reward of geographical investigation. There is an idea among some, and even friends of Russia, that their travelers and explorers have not done themselves justice in recording their doings, but this in the broad sense is not true. Rather they have been poor chroniclers for the public; but their official reports, hidden away in government archives, are rich in their thorough investigations, oftentimes more nearly perfect and complete than the equivalents in our own language, where it takes no long argument to prove that great attention given to the public and popular account, has been at the expense of the similar qualities in the official report; while many expeditions, American and British, have not been under official patronage at all, which has seldom been the case with Russian research. As already noted, the bulk of similar volumes from other languages and other archives into the English has come from Great Britain; but probably from the unfortunate bitter antagonism between the two countries which has created an apathy in one and a suspicion in the other that they will not be judged in an unprejudiced way, Russia has not got a fair share of what she has really accomplished geographically translated into our tongue. It is through America, an unprejudiced nation, that this could be remedied, if a proper interest is shown, and which will probably be determined, in a greater or less degree, by the reception of this book here, although it comes to us in the roundabout way of the Danish language.

Frederick Schwatka.