BY THE RURICK. '297 



the channel which separates it from tlie ishmd of 

 Tiookea is six miles, consequently from the S, E. 

 point of Oura, to the S. E. point of Tiookea, is 

 eighteen miles. Now Lieutenant Kotzebue saw 

 only the southern end of Oura, therefore was 

 distant at least twenty miles from Tiookea, which 

 must have been concealed from him on account of 

 liis situation in sailing roiuid Oura; but even were 

 this not the case, he would not see it at a distance 

 of eighteen or twenty miles, as these low islands, 

 to use Lieutenant Kotzebue's own words, can be 

 seen at the most, at a distance of fifteen miles. I 

 should not have had the least doubt as to the iden- 

 tity of the islands of Spiridoff and Oura, had not 

 Byron and Cook both found the islands inhabited, 

 and Lieutenant Kotzebue, on the contrary, saw no 

 inhabitants; this objection may, however, also be 

 removed, andthe more so as Kotzebue was only near 

 the S.W. side of the island, and the residence of the 

 islanders might be on the other side, perliaps to 

 be nearer to the inhabitants of the neighbouring 

 island. 



The 23d of April. Land was seen on both 

 sides; Lieutenant Kotzebue recognised that in 

 the S.S.E. to be Cook's Palliser's islands, or, what 

 is the same, Roggewein's Shadelyk islands: that 

 in the S. S. W. appeared to him a new discovery. 

 He sailed through the channel which separates 

 the two groups, and steered to the westerly one, 

 which forms a chain of several islands thickly 

 overgrown with trees, and united by coral 



