I OS cook's voyage TO APltlL, 



sunk rocks, which are said by Muller* to lie in the 

 channel of the harbour of St. Peter and St. Paul. 

 The middle of the bay was full of loose ice, drifting 

 with the tide, but the shores were still entirely 

 blocked up with it. Great flocks of wild-fowl were 

 seen of various species ; likewise ravens, eagles, and 

 large flights of Greenland pigeons. We examined 

 every corner of the bay with our glasses, in search 

 of the town of St. Peter and St. Paul, which, accord- 

 ing to the accounts given us at Oonalashka, we had 

 conceived to be a place of some strength and consid- 

 eration. At length we discovered on a narrow 

 point of land to the north-north-east a few miserable 

 log-houses and some conical huts, raised on poles, 

 amounting in all to about thirty, which from their 

 situation, notwithstanding all the respect we wished 

 to entertain for a Russian ostrog, we were under the 

 necessity of concluding to be Petropaulowska. How- 

 ever, in justice to the generous and hospitable treat- 

 ment we found here, I shall beg leave to anticipate 

 the reader's curiosity, by assuring him that our dis- 

 appointment proved to be more of a laughable than 

 a serious nature. For in this wretched extremity of 

 the earth, situated beyond every thing that we con- 

 ceived to be most barbarous and inhospitable, and as 

 it were out of the very reach of civilization, barri- 

 cadoed with ice and covered with summer snow, in a 

 poor miserable port far inferior to the meanest of our 

 fishing towns, we met with feelings of humanity, 

 joined to a greatness of mind and elevation of senti- 

 ment, which would have done honour to any nation 

 or climate. 



During the night, much ice drifted by us with the 

 tide, and at day-light I was sent with the boats to 

 examine the bay, and deliver the letters we had 



^ ^ * Voyages made by the Russians from Asia to America, &c. 

 Translated from the German, by T. JetFerys, p. 37. 



