138 VOYAGE OF BENYOWSKY. [1771. 



by the ships of European nations ; and, strange to say, this voyage 

 was conducted under the Polish flag! In the month of May of 

 that year, a few persons, chiefly Poles, who had been exiled to 

 Kamtchatka for political reasons, succeeded in overpowering the 

 garrison of the small town of Bolscheretsk, on the south-west side 

 of Kamtchatka, where they were detained, and escaped to sea in 

 a vessel then lying in the harbor. They were directed in their 

 enterprise by Count Maurice de Benyowsky, a Hungarian, who had 

 been an officer in the Polish service, and from whose history of his 

 own life, afterwards published, all the accounts of their adventures 

 are derived. From these accounts, it appears that the fugitives, on 

 entering the Pacific, were driven northward as far as the 66th 

 degree of latitude ; during which part of their voyage, they fre- 

 quently saw the coasts of both continents, and visited several of 

 the Aleutian Islands. At Bering's Isle they found a number of 

 fugitive exiles, like themselves, established in possession, under the 

 command of a Saxon ; and at Unalashka, the largest of the group, 

 they discovered crosses, with inscriptions, erected by Krenitzin, in 

 1768. Proceeding thence towards the south, they touched at 

 several places in the Kurile, Japan, and Loochoo Islands, as also 

 at Formosa; and, at length, in September, they arrived at Canton, 

 where they carried the first furs which ever entered that city by sea.* 

 A circumstantial account of the principal voyages and discoveries 

 of the Russians, made between 1741 and 1770, drawn from original 

 sources, was published at St. Petersburg, in 1774, by J. L. Stoehlin, 

 councillor of state to the empress.-)- These records are curious and 

 interesting, but they throw very little light on the great geographical 

 questions relative to that part of the world, which then remained 

 unsolved ; and the accompanying chart only serves, at present, to 

 show more conspicuously the value of the discoveries effected by 

 other nations. According to this chart, the American coast ex- 

 tended, on the Pacific, in a line nearly due north-west from Cali- 



* Memoirs and Travels of Maurice Augustus Count de Benyowsky, written by 

 himself, published at London, in 1790. Benyowsky's account of his escape from 

 Kamtchatka, and his voyage to China, were for some time discredited ; but they have 

 since been confirmed, at least as regards the principal circumstances. He afterwards 

 had a variety of adventures, especially in Madagascar, of which he pretended to be 

 the rightful sovereign ; and he was, at length, killed at Foul Point, in that island, in 

 May, 1786, while at the head of a party of Europeans and natives, in a contest with 

 the French from the Isle of France. 



t Description of the newly-discovered Islands in the Sea between Asia and 

 America. A translation of the greater part of this work may be found in the last 

 edition of Coxe's History of Russian Discoveries. 



