142 National Geographic Magazine. 
obliged to winter in that region, not only without a harbor, but 
where no fuel could anywhere be obtained, where the native peo- 
ple do not acknowledge the authority of the Russian government, 
but are wholly independent and united against us in refusing to 
pay tribute. 
From the mouth of the Kamchatka river and all the way to 
this place along the seacoast wind elevated mountains, resembling 
a wall in steepness, and from which the snow does not disappear 
in summer. 
On the 20th of August four canoes were observed rowing 
toward us, containing about forty people who were Chukchi of 
the same sort as those whom we had met before. They brought 
for sale meat, fresh water, fish, fox skins, of which fifteen were of 
the white fox, and four walrus teeth, which my people bought of 
them for needles and flint-and-steels. They said that some among 
them had been overland with reindeer to the Kolyma river and 
that they never went by sea to the Kolyma; but, at a great dis- 
tance, by the seashore lived some of our people, born Russians, 
people whom they had known for a long time, and one of them 
said that he had been at the Anadyr post to trade. To other 
questions they gave the same answers as the Chukchi previously 
seen. ie 
On the 2d of September we entered the mouth of the Kam- 
chatka river and wintered at the post of Lower Kamchatka. 
On the 5th of June, 1729, having repaired the vessel which had 
been laid up, we went out of the mouth of the Kamchatka river 
and put to sea to the eastward, because the inhabitants of Kam- 
chatka declared that on fine days land could be seen across the sea. 
Though none of our own people had observed it, we went out to 
determine the authenticity of the information. We sailed nearly 
200 versts and saw not the slightest trace of land. We sailed 
around the south point of Kamchatka to the mouth of the Bol- 
shoia river, making a chart of this part which had not previously 
been delineated. From the mouth of the Bolshoia river we sailed 
across the sea to the post of Okhotsk having left at Lower Kam- 
chatka and at Bolsheretsk, out of the supplies received by us from 
the authorities of Yakutsk, flour, meal and dry salt meat to the 
amount of 800 puds. 
On the 23d of July the vessel reached the mouth of the 
Okhotsk river, where the outfit and supplies of the expedition 
were turned over to the governor and I, with my command, on 
