Pathfinders – Russian trades or service class men, whose activities lead them to geographic discovery of North and Northeast Asia, of the seas washing it and initiated its reclamation. They were the first to travel through the whole of Siberia from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean in around 60 years, from the end of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century. The starting point for all the trips to the shores of the Bering Strait and the northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk was the lower reaches of the Kolyma River. They also made use of the sea route from the Lena mouth to the mouths of the Yana, Indigirka, Alazeya, and Kolyma. In order to get access to the Pacific Ocean from the Lena in the seventeenth century, the Ps. also used the rivers Uda, Ulya, and Okhota, flowing into the Sea of Okhotsk. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Okhota and the Ulya were often reached by means of the rivers Maya (the Aldan tributary) and Yudoma (the Maya tributary).
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(2016). Pathfinders. In: Zonn, I.S., Kostianoy, A.G., Semenov, A.V. (eds) The Eastern Arctic Seas Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Seas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24237-8_389
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24237-8_389
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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