1776.] ERRORS IN THE EARLY RUSSIAN MAPS. 139 



forma, to the 70th degree of latitude, and was separated from the 

 opposite coast of Asia by a wide expanse of sea, containing many 

 islands, several of which correspond in name with those of the 

 Aleutian Archipelago, though the positions assigned to them are 

 far from correct : the largest of the islands there represented, 

 called Alascha, lies under the 67th parallel, between the western- 

 most point of America and the most eastern of Asia. In the beau- 

 tiful map of the Russian empire, published at St. Petersburg by 

 Treschot and Schmidt, in 1776, no land, except some islands, ap- 

 pears within twenty-five degrees of longitude east of Kamtchatka. 

 Other maps, however, which appeared at a much earlier period, 

 offer a view more nearly correct of the extreme north-western coasts 

 of America, although the geographer who constructed them must 

 have been guided almost entirely by suppositions. 



The errors of latitude, in all these map's, were very great, amount- 

 ing to ten degrees, in some instances ; and those of longitude were, 

 as may be readily supposed, much more considerable. Indeed, 

 before 1778, when Cook made his voyage through the North 

 Pacific, the differences in longitude, between places in that part 

 of the ocean, had never been estimated otherwise than by the dead 

 reckoning, which, however carefully observed, cannot afford accurate 

 results ; nor had any relation, which could be considered as nearly 

 correct, been established between the meridian of any point on the 

 Atlantic and that of any point on the North Pacific. 



