VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 55 



by fixing the relative situation of Asia and America, 

 and discovering the narrow bounds of the strait that 

 divides them, he has thrown a blaze of light upon 

 this important part of the geography of the globe, 

 and solved the puzzling problem about the peopling 

 of America, by tribes destitute of the necessary 

 means to attempt long navigations ; and, lastly, that, 

 though the principal object of the voyage failed, the 

 world will be greatly benefited even by the failure, 

 as it has brought us to the knowledge of the ex- 

 istence of the impediments which future navigators 

 may expect to meet with in attempting to go to the 

 East Indies through Beering's Strait. 



The extended review we have taken of the pre- 

 ceding voyages, and the general outline we have 

 sketched out, of the transactions of the last, which 

 are recorded at full length in these volumes, will not, 

 it is hoped, be considered as a prolix or unnecessary 

 detail. It will serve to give a just notion of the 

 whole plan of discovery executed by his Majesty's 

 commands. And it appearing that much was aimed 

 at, and much accomplished, in the unknown parts of 

 the globe, in both hemispheres, there needs no other 

 consideration, to give full satisfaction to those who 

 possess an enlarged way of thinking, that a variety 

 of useful purposes must have been effected by these 

 researches. But there are others, no doubt, who, 

 too diffident of their own abilities, or too indolent to 

 exert them, would wish to have their reflections as- 

 sisted, by pointing out what those useful purposes 



discoveries; and that the King of Great Britain's ships should 

 traverse the globe in 1778, to confirm to the Russian empire the 

 possession of near thirty degrees, or above six hundred miles of 

 continent, which Mr. Engel, in his zeal for the practicability of a 

 north-east passage, would prune away from the length of Asia to 

 the eastward. See his Memoires Geographiques, &c. Lausanne, 

 1765; which, however, contains much real information ; and many 

 parts of which are confirmed by Captain Cook's American dis- 

 coveries. 



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