mss142-vasilevShishmarev-i1-005

3001 Veazey Terrace N. W. #317
Washington, D. C. 20008
9 July 1970

Mr. Edward Connery Lathem
Librarian of the College
Dartmouth College Library
Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

Dear Mr. Lathem:

I was delighted to get your letter of 2 July yesterday with your
encouraging news, and as soon as I can get together with Mrs. Jo
-sephson, I shall send you copies of original pages with transla-
tions. Because so little of this particular journey was needed
for my exact geographic area, we translated most of the applicable
parts orally after I had read through the articles. We shall,
therefore, write down various parts for your consideration.

When I send you the pages and translations, I shall also send the
exact pages with approximate number of words, although I think
it is around 48,000 words. Adding an introduction and explana-
tory notes might put it somewhere around 55,000 words, although
this is just a rough guess. If the project meets with your
approval, the translation and tping costs will not exceed $750.00.
I do not expect any compensation for my editing of Mrs. Josephson's
translation or for writing introductory material or notes. I
will just be happy to see it published as an addition to our know-
ledge of the north, and would be very much interested in your ex-
ploring publication possibilities if it meets your expectations.

Here is the history of this project, and an outline of the material
to be included so that you will know its exact scope and can further
form an opinion about it.

Working up this material has been somewhat like following a detective
story. I have been gathering material for an ethnohistory of the
Bering Strait Eskimos for about 10 years, but the writing has been
considerably slowed by writing numerous other papers and books,
not mention taking time out to learn to read Russian. This was
necessary because I am utilizing explorers' first-hand observations
of early Eskimo life, and a number of these accounts were untrans-
lated. After I had gained a certain control over the Russian I set
out to track down the voyages mentioned casually in some of the
general histories of Alaska. I have had no success in some quarters,
but (I think!) a spectacular success with Vasiliev's and Shishmarev's
expedition, which started out from Europe in 1819 and spent the
years 1820 and 1821 in the arctic as far north as Icy Cape, Alaska.