APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 273 



damaged in landing, the Captain sent his boatswain with the small 

 boat and carpenters well armed to fnrnish necessary assistance. The 

 small boat disappeared also, and was never seen again. At the same 

 time great smoke was observed continually ascending from the shore. 



Shortly afterwards two boats filled with natives sallied forth and lay 

 at some distance from the vessel, when, crying " Agai, Agai," they put 

 back to the shore. Sorrowfully the Kussian navigator turned away, 

 not knowing the fate of his comrades, and unable to help them. This 

 was not far from Sitka. 



Such was the first discovery of these north-western coasts, and such 

 are the first recorded glimpses of the aboriginal inhabitants. The two 

 navigators had different fortunes. Tschirikow, deprived of his boats, 

 and therefore unable to land, hurried home. Adverse winds and storms 

 interfered. lie supplied himself with fresh water onlj^ by distilling the 

 ocean or pressing rain from the sails. But at last on tlie 9th October he 

 reached Kamtchatka, with his ship's company of seventy diminished 

 to forty-nine. 



During this time Behring was driven, like Ulysses, on the uncertain 

 "waves. A single tempest raged for seventeen days, so that AndrewHos- 

 selberg, the ancient pilot, who had known the sea for fifty years, declared 

 that he had seen nothing like it iu his life. Scurvy came with its dis- 

 heartening horrors. The Commodore himself was a sufferer. Eigging 

 broke; cables snapped; anchors were lost. At last the tempest-tossed 

 vessel was cast upon a desert island, then without a name, wliere the 

 Commodore, sheltered in a ditch and half covered with sand as a pro- 

 tection against cold, died on the Sth December, 1741. llis body after 

 his decease was "scraped out of the ground" and buried on this island, 

 which is called by his name, and constitutes an outpost of the Asiatic 

 Continent. Thus the Russian navigator, alter the discovery of America, 

 died in Asia, llussia, by the recent demarcation, does not fail to retain 

 his last resting place among her possessions. 



TITLE OF RUSSIA. 



For some time after these expeditious, by which Russia achieved the 

 palm of discovery, Imperial enterprise slumbered in those seas. The 

 knowledge already acquired was continued and confirmed only by 

 private individuals, who were led there in quest of furs. In 1745 the 

 Aleutian Islands were discovered by an adventurer in search of sea- 

 otters. In successive voyages all these islands were visited for similar 

 purposes. Among these was Ounalaska, the principal of the group of 

 Fox Islands, constituting a continuation of the Aleutian Islands, whose 

 inhabitants and i)roductions were minutely described. 



In 1768 private enterprise was superseded by an expedition ordered 

 by the Empress Catharine, which, leaving Kamtchatka, explored this 

 whole archipelago and the Peninsula of Alaska, which to the islanders 

 stood for the whole continent. Shortly afterwards all these discov- 

 eries, beginning with those of Behring and Tschirikow, were verified 

 by the great English navigator Captain Cook. In 1778 he sailed along 

 the north-western coast, "near where Tschirikow anchored in 1741;" 

 then again in sight of mountains "wholly covered with snow from the 

 highest summit down to the sea-coast," "with the summit of an ele- 

 vated mountain above the horizon," which he supi^osed to be the 

 Mount St. Eli as of Behring; then by the very anchorage of Behring; 

 then among the islands through which Behring zigzagged, and along 

 the coast by the Island of St. Lawrence until arrested by ice. If any 

 S. Ex. 177, pt. 4 18 



