tt of captain Billings. ^uly to. 



Captain Billings then stood acrofs to the Tchutfki 

 Nofs, where he landed, and found the complaints of 

 the Americans but too well founded, as that 

 people were in fact served by American slaves, one 

 of which, a woman, he bought of them, and will 

 bring down here. The captain had dispatched an 

 officer of Cofsaks, well versed in the Tchutflci lan- 

 guage and customs, to engage them to permit his 

 pafsage by land with a small suite through their 

 country, and that same interpreter he found waiting 

 his arrival at the Tchutiki Nofs, with some of the 

 chiefs of that bold and independent nation, who had 

 agreed to his request under a promise of tobbaco and 

 other trifles in high estimation with them. He 

 therefore set out under their conduct, and after 

 being carried" by water, along the south coast of 

 the promontory, crofsed over by land to ex- 

 amine the north ; from which he set out in 

 sledges drawn by rein deer, for Yakuts ; where he 

 arrived almost dead with fatigue, after a journey of 

 pine months from his landing at the Nofs. 



During this long and tiresorpe journey, where 

 little presented to amuse the travellers, he was se- 

 veral times in danger of being cut off, from the jea- 

 lousy his astronomical observations excited in the 

 natives, but above all his measuring the road with 

 a line, whilst driving slowly upon deep soft snow. 

 His interpreter now here, (the same sent as mefsen- 

 ger,) thinks, that nothing but the awe the Tchutiki 

 stBod in, of his armed ftiip left at the Nofs, save4 

 the travellers-; as he over heard them occasionally 

 talking pf the vengeance his crew would take of the 



