f,o8 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



exploration of the sea which bounds the great Russian Empire 

 on the north and east. The plan was drawn up by Pallas and 

 Coxe, and the carrying out of it was entrusted to an English 

 naval officer in the Russian service, J. Billings, who had taken 

 part in Cook's last voyage. Among the many others who were 

 members of the expedition, may be mentioned Dr. Merk, 

 Dr. RoBECK, the secretary Martin Sauer, and the Captains 

 Hall, Sarytchev, and Behring the younger, in all more 

 than a hundred persons. The expedition was fitted out on a 

 very large scale, but in consequence of Billings' unfitness for 

 having the command of such an expedition the result by no 

 means corresponded to what might reasonably have been expected. 

 The expedition made an inconsiderable excursion into the Polar 

 Sea from the ■%h June to the ^Vf f" 1787, and in 1791 Billings 



19 29th July. ' O 



sailed up to St. Lawrence Bay, from which he went over land 

 with eleven men to Yakutsk. The rest of this lengthened 

 expedition does not concern the regions now in question.^ 



Among voyages during the century it remains to give account 

 of those which have been made by Otto VON Kotzebue, who 

 during his famous circumnavigation of the globe in 1815—18, 

 among other things also passed through Behring' s Straits and 

 discovered the strata, remarkable in a geological point of view 

 at Eschscholz Bay ; LuTKE, who during his circumnavigation of 

 the globe in 1820—29, visited the islands and sound in the 

 neighbourhood of Chukotskoj-nos ; MooRE, who wintered at 

 Chukotskoj-nos in 18-18—49, and gave us much interesting 

 information as to the mode of life of the Namollos and 

 Chukches; Kellet, who in 1849 discovered Kellet Land and 

 Herald Island on the coast of Wrangel Land ; John Rodgers, 

 who in 1855 carried out for the American government much 

 important hydrographical work in the seas on both sides of 

 Behring's Straits ; Dallmann, who during a trading voyage in 

 the Behring Sea landed at various points on Wrangel Land ; Long, 

 who in 18G7, as captain of the whaling barque JSfiie, discovered the 

 sound between Wrangel Land and the mainland (Long Sound) 

 and penetrated from Behring's Straits westwards farther than 



1 Billings' voyage is described in Martin Saner's Account of a Geogra- 

 phical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Asia, &c., hy 

 Commodore Joseph BilUngs, London, 1802, and Gavrila Sarycliev's 

 Achtjdhrige Reise im nordUchen Siherien, auf dem E'lsmeere unci deni nord- 

 (istlichen Ocean. Aus dem Rtissischen ilbersetzt von J. H. Basse, Leipzig, 

 1805-1806. As interesting to our Swedish readers it may be mentioned 

 f bat the Russian hunter Prybilov informed Sauer that a Swedish hrigantine, 

 Merhur, coppered, carrying sixteen cannon, commanded by J. H. Coxe, in 

 1788, cruised in the Behring Sea in order to destroy the Russian settlements 

 there. They however, according to Prybilov's statement to Sauer, "did 

 no damage, because they saw that we liad nothing worth taking away. 

 They instead gave us gifts, because they were ashamed to offer violence 

 to such poor fellows as we" (Sauer, p. 213). 



