
The following text is a critical edition of several letters by Polish missionaries – Bernardines – who established missionary outposts in Siberia (Irkutsk and Tomsk) in the first half of the 19th century. Bernardines came to Siberia to continue the Catholic mission after the Jesuits had been expelled from Russia in 1820. Letters from 1821 are descriptions of pastoral journeys in Eastern Siberia, in which the main subject matter is land, nature and the local people. This publication is the second edition of the letters, since the first one – from 1995 – contained too many flaws and errors. The copies of the letters are still kept in the collection of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in Kiev.