394 Russian Discoveries: . 
means are so much superior, and those who are employed on it, 
authorized travellers. ‘Thus circumstanced, it can create no sur- 
prise that an humble individual, like myself, should submit to 
make a sacrifice of private gratification, and every prospect of 
success, to a sense of the impropriety of proceeding further at 
present, and of the indelicacy which would result from such a 
step; but, should the commander of the expedition, from any 
circumstances, desist from the further prosecution of his disco- 
veries, I shall, in that case, continue my journey eastward ’’— 
the meaning of all which will, we think, be perfectly intelligible, 
from what we are about to state. 
The expedition noticed by Captain Cochrane consisted of two 
ship corvettes which left Spithead in the year 1819, at the same 
time that the expedition alluded to in our first paragraph pro- 
ceeded to the southern hemisphere. In July 1820, they reached 
Behring’s Strait, and were supposed to have passed it in that year; 
they returned, however, in the winter to some of the Russian 
settlements on the coast of America; and, as now appears from 
Captain Cochrane’s letter to us, were again in that neighbour- 
hood in June 1821: of their ulterior proceedings no intelligence 
had reached Petersburgh at the period of the latest accounts from 
that capital. If they should have succeeded in doubling Icy Cape, 
it is just possible that they may fall in with Captain Parry, pro- 
vided they are lucky enough to escape the fate of Sir Hugh Wil- 
Joughby and his unfortunate associates: of such a catastrophe, 
we are by no means sure that they do not run a very considerable 
risk, from the slight and insufficient manner in which they were 
fitted out; being, in fact, destitute of every necessary for passing 
a winter in the Frozen Ocean, and, as we happen to know, in 
want even of the common implements for encountering the ice : 
with some of the latter, however, they were supplied from the 
dock-yard of Portsmouth, on application to the British Govern- 
ment. 
We should not be disposed to detract from the merit. which, 
in this instance, would be justly due to the Russian government, 
if we could persuade ourselves that the extension of geographical 
knowledge, for its own sake and the benefit of mankind, was the 
prime object of this expedition; but when we couple it with the 
cautious language of Captain Cochrane, and the sudden and un- 
expected check thrown in the way of his further progress, after 
teaching the shores of Behring’s Strait, and also with a contem- 
poraneous ukase of a most extraordinary nature (if we may cre- 
dit what appears in the public journals), we cannot but entertain 
some suspicion, that His Imperial Majesty, in his northern ex~ 
peditions, has been governed by other motives than those of 
merely advancing the cause of science and discovery, 
Tn 
