Eastbound through Siberia. Georg Wilhelm Steller

tion>

      

      EASTBOUND THROUGH SIBERIA

       EASTBOUNDTHROUGH SIBERIA

       Observations from the GreatNorthern Expedition

      Georg Wilhelm Steller

      Translated and Annotated by

      Margritt A. Engel and Karen E. Willmore

      INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

      This book is a publication of

      Indiana University Press

      Office of Scholarly Publishing

      Herman B Wells Library 350

      1320 East 10th Street

      Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

       iupress.indiana.edu

      © 2020 by Margritt Engel and Karen Willmore

      All rights reserved

      No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

      ISBN 978-0-253-04777-9 (hardback)

      ISBN 978-0-253-04778-6 (paperback)

      ISBN 978-0-253-04784-7 (ebook)

      1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20

      CONTENTS

Foreword: The Steller Legacy / Jonathan C. Slaght

Translators’ Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Instructions for Georg Wilhelm Steller from February 18, 1739, from Yeniseysk / Johann Georg Gmelin and Gerhard Friedrich Müller

Part IDescription of Irkutsk and Its Surroundings

1About Irkutsk and Its Surroundings

2About Irkutsk Itself

       3About the Public Offices

       4About the Clergy

       5About the Chinese Trade and Chinese Trade Goods

       6About Customs and Lifestyle in Irkutsk

       7About Transbaikalia

       8Report from the Uda River

       Part II Travel Journal from Irkutsk to Kamchatka

       9From Irkutsk to Ust’Ilginskaya (3/4–3/13)

       10From Ust’Ilginskaya to Kirensk (3/14–5/1)

       11From Kirensk to Yakutsk (5/2–5/24)

       12In Yakutsk and Yarmanka (5/25–6/19)

       13From Yarmanka to the Amga River (6/20–7/2)

       14From the Amga to the Yuna River (7/3–7/21)

       15From the Yuna River to Yudoma Cross (7/22–8/8)

       16From Yudoma Cross to Okhotsk (8/9–8/13)

       17In Okhotsk (8/14–8/26)

       18Salmon Fishing and Preserving (8/27)

       19From Okhotsk to Bol’sheretsk (8/28–9/16)

       Afterword

       Appendix A: Georg Wilhelm Steller’s Life

       Appendix B: Schnurbuch Account Ledger

       Appendix C: Letter to Johann Daniel Schumacher

       Appendix D: Plants Named after Steller

       Glossary of Foreign Words

       Glossary of People

       Bibliography

       Plant Index

       Index

       FOREWORD: THE STELLER LEGACY

      Jonathan C. Slaght

      THE EARLIEST EXPLORERS OF SIBERIA AND THE RUSSIAN Far East were the fur traders and Cossacks, hard men of rust and mud. Leaning heavily on firearms and steel, they established a chain of Russian outposts winding from Irkutsk in Siberia to Yakutsk and Kamchatka in the Russian Far East. Among them were Ivan Moskvitin, the first Russian to reach the Sea of Okhotsk (in 1639); Kurbat Ivanov, the first Russian to stumble upon the shores of Lake Baikal (in 1643); Vassili Poyarkov, the first Russian to reach the Amur River (in 1644); and Vladimir Atlasov, among the bloodiest of the Cossacks, the first to organize explorations of Kamchatka. Some of these explorers died peacefully, whereas others, like the morally ambiguous Atlasov, died violently while cementing the Russian Empire’s hold on this frontier.