The expedition of Naval Lieutenant Lavrentiy Alekseyevich Zagoskin constitutes one of the most remarkable pages in the history of Russian exploration during the first half of the nineteenth.This translation makes available an outstanding source in the history of early scientific investigations in the North.

Henry N. Michael (1912-2006) was a scientist and senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology whose groundbreaking work in the application of tree-ring analysis revolutionized archaeological dating techniques. Previously, he was a professor of geography at Temple University and then Chair of the Geography Department from 1965 to 1973. He retired in 1980.