BY THE RURICK. 309 



bably carried him so quickly to the west, that he 

 passed the chain, without seeing any of the islands 

 belonging to it. It would not have been possible 

 for him to ply to the east against the monsoon, and 

 against the current, without great loss of time. 



I now ask, whether the groups described by 

 Lieutenant Kotzebue are a new discovery, or whe- 

 ther they have been previously known ? The an- 

 swer is, that it is very probable that they were 

 first seen by M. Kotzebue, which I shall now 

 endeavour to prove. If we compare the situation 

 of the islands of Chatham and Calvert, discovered 

 by Capt. Marshall in I788, on board the ship Scar- 

 borough, between the ninth and tenth degrees of 

 latitude, and of Bass Reef-tied islands and Bishop 

 Junction Island, so named by Bishop on board 

 the ship Nautilus, in the year 1799, which latter 

 are indubitably the same with Chatham and Cal- 

 vert islands, it might easily be concluded that the 

 islands discovered by Kotzebue, between the ninth 

 and tenth degrees are identical with them. But as 

 we know that to the west of the chain of Radack, 

 exactly in the same latitude, there lie other 

 groups of islands, it is, at least, just as probable, 

 that Captain Marshall saw the western and not 

 the eastern islands. This would, then, also be the 

 case with the group of Ailu, which, according to 

 Kotzebue, lies in 10° 28', and, consequently, ex- 

 actly coincides with the latitude of the islands of 



X 3 



