APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 229 



viously in view, but it would be vanity and presumption in me to 

 attempt a task of the kind, while their means are so much sui)erior, 

 and those who are employed on it authorized travellers. Thus circum- 

 stanced, it can create no surprise that an humble individual like myself 

 should submit to make a sacrifice of jjrivate gratification and every 

 prospect of success to a sense of the impropriety of proceeding- farllier 

 at present, and of the indelicacy which would result from such a step; 

 but, should the commander of the expedition, from any circumstances, 

 desist from the further prosecution of his discoveries, I shall, in that 

 case, continue my journey easticard,^^ the meaning of all which will, we 

 think, be perfectly intelligible from what we are about to state. 



The expedition noticed by Captain Cochrane consisted of two ship 

 corvettes which left Spithead in the year 1819, at the same time that 

 the expedition alluded to in our first paragraph proceeded to the 

 Southern Hemisphere. In July 1820 they reached Behring Strait, and 

 were supposed to have passed it in that year; they returned, how- 

 15 ever, in the winter to some of the Kussian settlements on the coast 

 of America, and, as now appears from Captain Cochrane's letter 

 to us, were again in that neighbourhood in June 1821; of their ulterior 

 proceedings no intelligence had reached St. Fetersburgh at the period 

 of the latest accounts from that capital. If they should have succeeded 

 in doubling Icy Cape, it is just possible that they may fall in with Cap- 

 tain Parry, provided they are lucky enough to escape the fate of Sir 

 Hugh Willoughby and his unfortunate associates; of such a catastrophe 

 we are by no means sure that they do not run a very considerable risk, 

 from the slight and insufficient manner in which they weie fitted out, 

 being, in fact, destitute of every necessary for i)assing a winter in the 

 Frozen Ocean, and, as we hap])en to know, in want even of the common 

 implements for encountering the ice; with some of the latter, however, 

 they were supplied from the Dockyard of Portsmouth, on application 

 to the British Government. 



We should not be disposed to detract from the merit which, in this 

 instance, would be justly due to the Eussian Government, if we could 

 j)ersuade ourselves that the extension of geographical knowledge, for 

 its own sake and the benefit ot mankind, was the prime object of this 

 exi)edition ; but when we couple it with the cautious language of Cap- 

 tain Cochrane, and the sudden and unexpected check thrown in the 

 way of his further ])rogress, after reaching the shores of Behring Strait, 

 and also with a contemporaneous Ukase of a most exti^aordinary nature 

 (if we may credit what a])i>ears in the public jouriuils), we cannot but 

 entertain some suspicion tliat His Imperial Majesty, in his northern 

 expeditions, has been governed by other motives than those of merely 

 advancing the cause of science and discovery. 



In this curious manifesto (for such, in effect, it is) the Maritime 

 Powers of Europe and America are given to understand that his Impe- 

 rial Majesty of Eussia has assumed possession of all that portion of the 

 north-west coast of America which lies between the 51st degree of lati- 

 tude and the Icy Cape, or extreme north; and, moreover, that he inter- 

 dicts the approach of ships of ever^^ other nation to any part of this 

 line nearer than 100 miles. Wliether this wholesale usurpation of 2,000 

 miles of sea-coast, to the greater part of which Russia can have no pos- 

 sible claim, will be tacitly passed over by England, Spain, and the 

 United States, the three Powers most interested in it, we pretend not 

 to know; but we can scarcely be mistaken in predicting that His lmi)e- 

 rial Majesty will discover, at no distant period, that he has assumed an 

 authority, and asserted a principle, which he will hardly be permitted to 



