PACIFIC AND BEERING'S STRAIT. 263 



US SO far that some imagined they could perceive the 

 party to be dressed in European clothes. A boat was 

 immediately despatched to the shore ; but, as the reader 

 has already begun to suspect, it was a party of Esqui- 

 maux, who wished to dispose of some skins for 

 tobacco. 



This disappointment lost us a favourable tide, and 

 we did not clear the sound before the night of the 

 29th. After passing Cape Espenburg, a strong north- 

 w^est wind made it necessary to stand off shore, in doing 

 which the water shoaled from thirteen to nine fathoms 

 upon a bank lying off SchismarefF Inlet, and again 

 deepened to thirteen : we then bore away for the strait, 

 and at eleven o'clock saw the Diomede Islands, thir- 

 teen leagues distant ; and about four o'clock rounded 

 Cape Prince of Wales very close, in twenty-seven 

 fathoms water. 



This celebrated promontory is the western termina- 

 tion of a peaked mountain, which, being connected with 

 the main by low ground, at a distance has the ap- 

 pearance of being isolated. The promontory is bold, 

 and remarkable by a number of ragged points and 

 large fragments of rock lying upon the ridge which 

 connects the cape with the peak. About a mile to the 

 northward of the cape, some low land begins to pro- 

 ject from the foot of the mountain, taking first a 

 northerly and then a north-easterly direction to Schis- 

 marefF Inlet. Off this point we afterwards found a 

 dangerous shoal, upon which the sea broke heavily. 

 The natives have a village upon the low land near the 

 cape called Eidannoo, and another inland, named 

 King-a-ghe; and as they generally select the mouths 

 of rivers for their residences, it is not improbable that 

 a stream may here empty itself into the sea, which, 



1827. 



