Cochrane the Traveller.— Imperial Ukase. 393 
crossing the ice of the polar sea on sledges drawn by dogs, in 
search of the land said to have been discovered, in 1762, to the 
northward of the Kolyma. He travelled directly north, eighty 
miles, without perceiving any thing but a field of interminable 
ice, the surface of which had now become so broken and un- 
even, as to prevent a further prosecution of his journey. ~ He had 
gone far enough, however, to ascertain that no such land could 
ever have been discovered. The idle speculation, therefore, of 
the junction of Asia with North America, which we always re- 
jected as chimerical, may now be considered as finally set at rest. 
Indeed, the simple narrative of the voyage performed by Desh- 
new in the year 1648, from the mouth of the Kolyma to the gulf 
of Anadyr, never, for a moment, left a doubt on our minds of 
its authenticity. 
Information was recently received that the enterprising pe- 
destrian Captain Cochrane had reached the Altai mountains, on 
the frontier of China. Further accounts from this extraordinary 
traveller have since reached us; they are dated from the mouth 
of the Kolyma, and from Okotsk, the former in March, the lat- 
ter in June 182]. He had proceeded to the neighbourhood of 
the North-east cape of Asia, which he places half a degree more 
to the northward than Baron Wrangel; but either he had no in- 
strument sufficiently accurate to ascertain its latitude with preci- 
sion, or, as we have some reason to believe, he states it only 
from computation ; for it does not clearly appear from his letter 
to us that he was actually on that part of the coast, though, from 
another letter addressed to the President of the Royal Society of 
London, it might be conjectured that his information was ob- 
tained from observation on the spot. ‘ No land,’ he says, ¢ is 
considered to exist to the northward of it. The east side of 
the Noss is composed of bold and perpendicular bluffs, while the 
west side exhibits gradual declivities ; the whole most sterile, but 
presenting an awfully magnificent appearance.’ From the Koly- 
ma to Okotsk, he had, he says, a ‘ dangerous, difficult, and fa- 
tiguing journey of three thousand versts,’ a great part of which 
he performed, on foot, in seventy days. After such an adven- 
turous expedition from Petersburgh, to the north-eastern ex- 
tremity of Siberia, we regret to find that the shores of Kams~ 
chatka are likely to be the boundary of his arduous and perilous 
enterprise. After gratefully noticing the generosity and conside- 
ration which he every where experienced at the hands of the 
Russian Government and of individuals, he adds—‘ that Govern- 
ment has an expedition in Behring’s Straits, whose object is to 
trace the continent of America to the northward and eastward, 
I had the same thing previously in view: but it would be vanity 
and presumption in me to attempt a task of the kind, while their 
Vol. 59. No, 289, Alay 1822. 5D means 
