INTRODUCTION. 
In the month of March of the year 1823, I 
was appointed by his Imperial Majesty Alex- 
ander the First, of glorious memory, to the 
command of a ship, at that time unfinished, but 
named the Predpriatie (the Enterprise). She 
had been at first destined for a voyage pure- 
ly scientific, but circumstances having occur- 
red which rendered it necessary to change 
the object of the expedition, I was ordered to 
take in at Kronstadt a cargo to Kamschatka, 
and to sail from the latter place to the north- 
west coast of America, in order to protect the 
Russian American Company from the smug- 
gling carried on there by foreign traders. On 
this station my ship was to remain for one year, 
VOL. -f. B 
