156 



THE SEA. 



The two ships, after making many discoveries in the Pacific, entered Bearing Strait 

 on August 9th, 1779, and anchored near a point of land which has been subsequently found 

 to be the extreme western point of North America, and to which Cook gave the name 

 Cape Prince of Wales. Some elevations, like stages, and others like huts, were seen on 

 this part of the coast, and they thought also that some people were visible. A little 

 later Cook stood over to the Asiatic coast, where, entering a large bay, he found a village 



ENCOUNTER WITH SEA-HOUSES. 



of the natives known now-a-days as Tchuktchis. They were found to be peaceable and 

 civil, and several interchanges of presents were made. 



In 1865 and 1866 the writer of these pages, when in the service of the Russian -American 

 Telegraph Expedition, had an opportunity of visiting an almost identical village in Plover 

 Bay, Eastern Siberia. The bay itself, sometimes called Port Providence, has generally 

 passed by the former name since the visit of H.M.S. Plover, which laid up there in the 

 winter of 1848-9, when employed on the search for Sir John Franklin. Bare cliffs and 



* The writer has visited many parts of Russian- America, or, as it is now called, Alaska, a little south of the 

 above point. The natives as a rule live underground in winter, but they have for summer use board and log 

 houses on the surface, and stages above and around them of all kinds, some for drying fish, others for raising 

 sledges or canoes above the surface of the ground, &c. 



