The age-herald., 1900-06-24
ID FIND THE LAND
 OF SANNIKOF
Baron Toll, the Russian Explorer. to Go in Search of ThlS
 Mysterious Island.

1HtTe Is pTODdDly iO iSidlid III tiiN HoAiN that has had a more romantic history than sannikof island in the Arctic sea. Nearly a century ago this mysterious island-was discovered, and for time 1t held a place in the maps of the Arctic country. AS absolutely nothing was known in regard to the extent or shape of this new country. the old maps indicated it's To- cation by two vague outlines, which were marked Land seen by Sannikof," and so the matter remained for about a dozen years, when even these outlines were stricken from the maps it having been in- sisted by later explorers that no such country existed. They said that Sanni- kofs eyes had deceived him, and that there was no such land to be found AS this statement was reiterated again and again, it was finally accepted as true, and the Land seen by Sannikof' had no further interest for geographers.
 So the matter remained for more than sixty years, but today Baron Toll, the Russian explorer, comes once more to the front to declare that there actually is such a land; that he himself has seen 1t, and that he is prepared to prove his assertion by actually visiting the island. In fact, he Is so positive in his declarations that he has interested the CZar of Russia in his project to such an extent that the money to defray the expenses of the expedition, which is to start for the north in few weeks, will be furnished from the imperial treasury Baron Toll also believes that he will discover that this island is not the only one that is as yet unknown to science. He is of the opinion that it is part of an arch;pelago and that the researches that he will undertake next summer Will add materially to human knowledge Whether he succeeds or not time can only tell, put his expedition will be watched with more interest than has been accorded any slm- liar investigation in years.
 Jacob Sannikof was a merchant or Yaklltsk on the Lena river, and rom lo0o to 1S11 he made a series or adVenturesone Journeys to the New Siberian Islands. III fact he was one of the discoverers of the New Siberian Islands, and was the hrst man to spend a whole summer along that coast Later he made many trips to this part of the country some of them haVlnS been made in the service of MT. SyroVatskl of Yakutsk, who held a government mo- nopoly of the trade in mammoth ivory, skins and furs, all of which could be obs tained in great abundance on these islands On other occasions Sannikof journeyed to these mortimer lands as the companion of Matthias Hedenstrom, whose writings have long been part of the literature of Arctic explorations.
 JJp to this time the world has had very imperfect idea of the topography and contour of the lands in this part of the globe but Sannikof was natural explorer, and his labors added to the acute and ac- curate observat tions of Hedenstrom open up a new field for exploration. They pro- vided that so far from being worthless and barren waste of ice the New Siberian Islands constituted a country that rad much within it to interest and instruct the scientific.
 It was while engaged in one of these
 -.1-.-c tl,.o,, terious land that has since borne his name. At this time he was engaged in exploring the northen coast of the New Siberian Is- lands, when his sharp eye discerned, far to the north of the islands of Kotelnoi and New Siberia, those unknown lands whose conjectural outlines appeared for the first and almost the last time on the maps pub lished in 1911. It was clear weather and the land stood out so distinctly that there could be no mistake about the fact of it's exist ence.
 Sanuikof immediately announced his dis covery to Hedenstrom and the two eKplor- CTS set out to visit this ffew country. Talk ing their dog sleds, they started out upon the ice and had succeeded in making their way a long distance from land when they found themselves faced by wide stretches of open water and they were obliged to turn back without accomplishing their pur- pose. The further the ywent, however, the more plainly the land disclosed itself, and they even discovered certain things that led them to believe that this land might be inhabited.
 From that day the one wish of Sannikof's life was to learn something more about the land that he had discovered but this was an ambition that he was never to realize, and when, ten years after the mem- orable Sannikof-Hadenstrom journey Lieu tenant Anjou reported that the land was nothing more less than a mirage and explorers ceased to look for it.
 Lieutenant Anjou had been sent out by the Russian Minister of Marine to make a thorough survey of the New Siberian Islands and to discover, if possible, some thing more authentic about the unkown land of which Hadenstrom had spoken so positively in his books. After completing his task at New Siberia, the lieutenant made several attempts to find the other land. He set out in the direction that Had enSrom had indicated and found the stretches of open water ust as it had been described by the earlier explorer. Later he made an attempt to bridge this chasm by means of a boat but the feat was such a dangerous one that he gave up the project and returned firmly convinced that the first explorers had permitted their i'm agination to get the better of their judg- men. He insisted that there was no land to the north of the New Siberian Islands, and his assertion was accepted as true
 So the matter stood until remnants of the ill-fated expedition of Captain De Long struggled back to civilization and reported that they had sighted a new island to the north of New Siberia. This in a measure substantiated the story told by Sannikof and, as the result, the question was once more opened to discussion Some held that the old explorer was correct, while others insisted that Lieutenant Anjou was right and that the members of the De Long ex- petition had simply been deuded by the same mirage that had appeared as land to Sannikof and Hadenstrom.
 Five years passed without any further knowledge being obtained, and then, on a clear day in 1886, Baron Toll, who was a member of Dr. Bunge's expedition, saw the sharply defined outlines of four flat topped mountains to the north of Kotelnoi and indications of a foreland to the east