Exploration
Europeans first sighted the Alaskan coast line in 1732. It was made by the Russian maritime explorer and navigator Ivan Fedorov from sea near present day Cape Prince of Wales on the eastern boundary of the Bering Strait opposite Russian Cape Dezhnev. He did not land. The first European landfall took place in southern Alaska in 1741 during the Russian exploration by Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov. Between 1774 and 1800 Spain also led several expeditions to Alaska in order to assert its claim over the Pacific Northwest. These claims were later abandoned at the turn of the 19th century. Count Nikolay Rumyantsev funded Russia's first naval circumnavigation under the joint command of Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Nikolai Rezanov in 1803–1806, and was instrumental in the outfitting of the voyage of the Riurik's circumnavigation of 1814–1816, which provided substantial scientific information on Alaska's and California's flora and fauna, and important ethnographic information on Alaskan and Californian (among others) natives.
Read more about this topic: Russian Colonization Of The Americas
Famous quotes containing the word exploration:
“I call her old. She has one family
Whose claim is good to being settled here
Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as he coasted by....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“For women who do not love us, as for the “disappeared”, knowing that we no longer have any hope does not prevent us form continuing to wait. We live on our guard, on watch; women whose son has gone asea on a dangerous exploration imagine at any minute, although it has long been certain that he has perished, that he will enter, miraculously saved, and healthy.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)