228 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



70tli parallel of latitude, and discovered, it is said, islands which had 

 escaped the searching eye of (Jook; they boast of having rounded the 

 Sandwich-land of that celebrated navigator, and of having ascertained 

 that the Soutliern Shetland, which was supposed to be a continent con- 

 nected with it, consists only of numerous groups of small islands. 

 They have sent land expeditions into the unknown regions of Tartary, 

 behind Thibet, and into the interior of the north-western side of I^orth 

 America. Men of science have been connnissioned to explore the 

 northern boundaries of Siberia, and to determine iioints, on that exten- 

 sive coast, hitherto of doubtful position. In February 1821 Baron 

 Wrangel, an officer of great merit, and of considerable science, left his 

 head-quarters on the Nishney Kolyma, to settle, by astronomical obser- 

 vations, the position of Shalatzkoi-Xoss, or the North east Cape of 

 Asia, which he found to lie iu latitude 70° 5' north, considerably lower 

 than it is usually placed on the maps. Having arranged this i)oint, he 

 undertook tlie hazardous enteri)rise of crossing the ice of the Polar Sea 

 on sledges drawn by dogs in search of the land said to have been dis- 

 covered in 1702 to the northward of the Kolyma. He travelled directly 

 north 80 miles without perceiving anything but a field of interminable 

 ice, the surface of which had now become so broken and uneven as to 

 prevent a further prosecution of his journey. He had gone far enough, 

 however, to ascertain that no such land could ever have been discovered. 

 The idle speculation, therefore, of the junction of Asia with North 

 America, which we always rejected as chimerical, may now be consid- 

 ered as finally set at rest. Indeed, the simple narrative of the voyage 

 performed by Deslmew in the year 1G48, from the mouth of the Kolyma 

 to the Gulf of Anadyr, never for a moment left a doubt on our minds 

 of its authenticity. 



The reader will recollect our recent statement of that enterprising 

 pedestrian. Captain Cochrane, having reached the Altai Mountains, on 

 the frontier of China. Further accounts from this extraordinary 

 traveller have since reached us; they are dated from the mouth of the 

 Kolyma, and from Okotsk, the former in March, the latter in June, 

 1821. He had proceeded to the neighbourhood of the North-east Cape 

 of Asia, which he places half a degree more to the northward than 

 Baron Wrangel; but either he had no instrument sufficiently accurate 

 to ascertain its latitude with precision, or, as we have some reason to 

 believe, he states it only from computation; for it does not clearly 

 ai)i)ear from his letter to us that he was actually on that part of the 

 coast, though, from another letter addressed to the President of the 

 Koyal Society of London, it might be conjectured that his information 

 was obtained from observation on the spot. "No land," he says, "is 

 considered to exist to the northward of it. The east side of the Noss 

 is composed of bold and perpendicular blutts, while the west side 

 exhibits gradual declivities; the whole most sterile, but presenting an 

 awfully magnificent appearance." From the Kolyma to Okotsk he 

 had, he says, a "dangerous, difficult, and fatiguing journey of 3,000 

 versts," a great part of which he i^erformed, on foot, in seventy days. 

 After such an adventurous expedition from St. Petersburgh to the 

 north-eastern extremity of Siberia, we regret to find that the shores of 

 Kamtchatka are likely to be the boundary of liis arduous and ])erilous 

 enterprise. After gratefully noticing the generosity and consideration 

 which he everywhere experienced at the hands of the Ivussian Govern- 

 ment and of individuals, he adds: "that Government has an ex])edi- 

 tion in Behring Straits, whose object is to trace the C-ontincnt of 

 America to the nortlnvard and eastward. I had the same thing pre- 



