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CHAPTER V. 

 1711 to 1779. 



Discoveries of the Russians from Kamtchatka — Voyages of Bering and Tchirikof to 

 the Arctic Sea and to the American Continent — Establishments of the Russian 

 Fur Traders in the Aleutian Islands — Voyages of Synd, Krenitzin, and Levashef 

 — First Voyage from Kamtchatka to China, made by Polish Exiles under Ben- 

 yowsky — General Inaccuracy of the Ideas of the Russians respecting the Geogra- 

 phy of the northernmost Coasts of the Pacific, before 1779. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the coasts of Asia 

 on the Pacific, north of the 40th parallel of latitude, were as little 

 known as those of America on the opposite side of the ocean. 



In 1643, Martin Geritzin de Vries and Hendrick Schaep, two 

 Dutch navigators, commanding the ships Kastrikom and Breskens, 

 explored the seas near Japan, as far north as the 48th degree of 

 latitude, and probably entered the great gulf, called the Sea of 

 Ochotsk, between the main land of Asia on the west, and Kamt- 

 chatka and the Kurile chain of islands on the east. It is also 

 related, that Thomas Peche, an English bucanier, sailed along the 

 same coasts in 1673, while in search of the Strait of Anian, the 

 entrance of which he was said to have found north of Japan, 

 though he was unable to pass through it, on account of the violence 

 of the winds from the north. 



From such imperfect accounts the maps of that part of the world 

 were generally constructed, before 1750. In those maps, Jesso, the 

 northernmost of the Japan Islands, appears as part of the Asiatic 

 continent, and Kamtchatka and the Kurile Islands are represented 

 as one extensive territory, under the name of the Company's Land, 

 united to America on the east, and separated from Jesso on the 

 west, by a narrow passage called the Strait of Fries, or the Strait 

 of Anian. 



In 1711, the whole of Northern Asia had been completely sub- 

 jugated by the Russians, to whom the rich furs * abounding in those 



* See the article on Furs and the Fur Trade, among the Proofs and Illustrations at 

 the concluding part of this volume, under the letter B. 



