xm.] BEHRING'S SECOND VOYAGE.; 535 



promontory of Asia in 67° 18' and observed that the coast trends 

 to the west from that point, as the Chukches had before informed 

 them. Behring on this account considered that he had fulfilled 

 his commission to ascertain whether Asia and America were 

 separated, and he now determined to turn, " partly because if the 

 voyage were continued along the coast ice might be met ^vith, 

 from which it might not be so easy to get clear, partly on account 

 of the fogs, which had already begun to prevail, and partly 

 because it would be impossible, if a longer stay were made 

 in these regions, to get back the same summer to Kamchatka. 

 There could be no question of passing the winter off the coast 

 of the Chukch Peninsula, because that would have been to expose 

 the expedition to certain destruction, either by being wrecked on 

 the jagged rocks of the open unknown coast, or by perishing from 

 want of fuel, or finally by dying under the hands of the fierce 

 unconquered Chukches." On the awSr *^^ vessel returned to 

 Nischni Kamchatskoj Ostrog.^ It was during this voyage that 

 the sound, which has since obtained the name of Behring's 

 Straits, is considered to have been discovered. But it is 

 now known that this discovery properly belongs to the gallant 

 hunter Deschnev, who sailed through these straits eighty years 

 before. I suppose therefore that the geograj)hical world will 

 with pleasure embrace the proposal to attach the name ot 

 Deschnev along with that of Behring to this part of our globe ; 

 which may be done by substituting Cape Deschnev, as the name 

 of the easternmost promontory of Asia, for that of East Cape, an 

 appellation which is misleading and unsuitable in many respects. 

 Several statements by Kamchadales regarding a great country 

 towards the east on the other side of the sea, induced Behring 

 the following year to sail away in order to ascertain whether this 

 was the case. In consequence of unfavourable weather he did not 

 succeed in reaching the coast of America, but returned with his 

 (jbject unaccomphshed, after which he sailed to Okotsk, where 

 lie arrived on the ^'"^'^''f - 1729. Hence he betook himself 



2ird July, 



immediately to St. Petersburg, which he reached after a journey 

 of six months and nine days. 



In maps published during Behring's absence, partly by Swedish 

 officers who had returned from imprisonment in Siberia,^ Kam- 

 chatka had been delineated with so long an extension towards 



^ A short, but instructive account of Behring's first voyage, based on an 

 official communication from the Russian Government to the King of Poland, 

 is inserted in t. iv. p. 561 of Descrijition geof/raphique de I'Empire ch la 

 Chine, par le P. J. B. Du Hakle, La Haye, 1736. The same official report 

 was probably the source of Miiller's brief sketch of the voyage {Miiller, 

 iii. p. 112). A map of it is inserted in the 1735 Paris edition of Du Halde's 

 work, and in Nouvel Atlas de la Cfiine, par M. D'Anville, La Haye, 1737. 



^ Histoire genealogiqiie des Tartares (note, p. 107), and Strahlenberg's oft- 

 quoted work (map, text, pp. 31 and 384). 



