"Muni de ces premières connoissances [referring to the discoveries of 1729-1739] M. de l'Isle traça une carte qui representoit l'extremite orientale de l'Asie, avec la partie opposée de l'Amerique septentrionale qui y répond, afin de faire voir aisément ce qui restoit à découvrir, et il dressa un Mémoire dans lequel il exposoit la manière qu'il jugeoit la plus avantageuse pour faire ces découvertes."[4] "Mais les vaisseaux Russes qui avoient été envoyés pour les découvertes dont nous venous de parler (1731-1741), n'étant pas encore revenus lorsqu'elle lui fut envoyé il extremit l'examen après son retour en France, qui étoit assez prochain. A son arrivée, il communiqua ses vues et cette relation a M. Buache; celui-ci, qui par la," etc., etc.[5] "Cette Mémoire [de l'Isle, 1750] étoit accompagnée d'une carte qui étoit comme l'esquisse du système géographique de M. de l'Isle sur cette partie."[6] [Footnote 2: Extracts from Histoire de l'Acadèmie Royale des Sciences, Année MDCCL (1750), 4°, Paris, 1754; and the same, Année 1753, 4°, Paris, 1757.] [Footnote 3:_ Loc. cit._, "Année MDCCL," p. 142.] [Footnote 4: _Ibid._, p. 151.] [Footnote 5: _Ibid._, p. 145.] [Footnote 6: _Loc. cit._, "Année 1753," p. 263.] It has been pointed out by several authorities that some of M. de l'Isle's statements in his memoir of 1752 are to be received with caution, especially his elaborate endeavors to impress the Paris Academy with the belief that the discoveries of Bering subsequent to the first voyage were the result of his (de l'Isle's) own carefully considered instructions. In this connection Adelung says: "De l'Isle, in his Explication de la carte des nouvelles découvertes au Nord [1752], traces out his proposed route quite differently [referring to de l'Isle's previous statements in his report to the St. Petersburg Academy in 1732], somewhat as if it had been outlined in view of accomplished facts." {213} It behooves us, then, to inquire carefully into the authenticity of the alleged map of de l'Isle of 1731, since if he antedated his opinions as to the route he might also have antedated his map. Fortunately we do not have to depend only on de l'Isle's own statement, either in 1750 before the Academy of Sciences at Paris, or as published in 1738 at St. Petersburg and printed at the printing office of the Royal Academy; for we also have extraneous and convincing evidence, even from sources critically hostile to the French astronomer. M. de l'Isle, in his Mémoires sur les Nouvelles découvertes au Nord de la mer du Sud, Paris, 1752, says: "After I had, near twenty years ago, got these first informations of the longitude of Kamschatka by means of Captain Bering's map and journal, I made use of them in constructing the map, representing the eastern extremity of Asia, with the opposite coast of North America, in order to show at once what still remains for discovery between two large parts of the world.