1768.] VOYAGE OF KRENITZIN AND LEVASCHEF. 137 



engaged in the fur trade of the North Pacific, until 1764, when the 

 empress Catharine II. ordered that proper measures should be 

 taken to procure exact information with regard to the islands, and 

 the American coasts, opposite her dominions in Asia. This am- 

 bitious sovereign had then just ascended the throne, and was, or 

 chose to appear, determined to carry out the views of Peter the 

 Great for the extension of the Russian empire eastward beyond the 

 Pacific. 



Agreeably to the orders of Catharine, Lieutenant Synd sailed, in 

 1766, from Ochotsk, and advanced northward, along the coast of 

 Kamtchatka, as far as the 66th degree of latitude ; and, in the fol- 

 lowing year, he made another voyage in the same direction, in 

 which he is supposed to have landed on the American continent. 

 Very few particulars respecting his expeditions are, however, known, 

 as the Russian government appears to have suppressed all accounts 

 of them, for reasons which have been suggested, but which it is 

 unnecessary here to repeat. 



In 1768, another expedition was commenced, for the purpose of 

 surveying the islands. With this object, Captains Krenitzin and 

 Levaschef quitted the mouth of Kamtchatka River, in July, each 

 commanding a small vessel ; and, after cursorily examining Bering's 

 Isle, and others near the coast of the peninsula, they stretched 

 across to the Fox Islands, the largest and easternmost of the Archi- 

 pelago, among which they passed the winter. Before the ensuing 

 summer, nearly half the crews of both vessels had perished from 

 scurvy ; and, when the navigators returned to Kamtchatka, in 

 October, 1769, they had done nothing more than to ascertain, ap- 

 proximately, the geographical positions of a few points in the Aleu- 

 tian chain. It appears, indeed, that Krenitzin had employed him- 

 self exclusively in collecting furs, with which his vessel was laden 

 on her arrival from her voyage. The only valuable information ob- 

 tained by the Russian government, through this costly expedition, 

 related to the mode of conducting the fur trade between Kamt- 

 chatka and the islands ; upon which subject the reports of Levaschef 

 were curious and instructive, and served to direct the government 

 in its first administrative dispositions, with regard to the newly- 

 discovered territories. 



The expedition of Krenitzin and Levaschef was the last made by 



the Russians in the North Pacific, for purposes of discovery or 



investigation, before 1783. In 1771, however, took place the first 



voyage from the eastern coast of the empire, to a port frequented 



18 



