328 RUSSIAN SETTLEMENTS IN CALIFORNIA. [1819. 



they passed successively to Woahoo and Atooi ; and in the latter 

 island they remained a year, committing many irregularities, with- 

 out, however, effecting, in any way, the supposed objects of their 

 expedition, until they were at length forced to submit to the author- 

 ities of Tamahamaha, and to quit the islands.* 



Expeditions were also made by the Russians to Bering's Strait, 

 and the seas beyond it, for the purpose of determining the question 

 as to the separation of Asia and America, which, though long before 

 supposed to have been ascertained, was again rendered doubtful by 

 some circumstances of recent occurrence. With this object, Cap- 

 tain Otto von Kotzebue sailed from Cronstadt in the ship Ruric, 

 which had been fitted out at the expense of the ex-chancellor 

 Romanzof, and, in the summer of 1816, penetrated through the 

 strait into the Arctic Sea ; but, although he surveyed the coasts of 

 both continents on that sea more minutely than any navigator who 

 had preceded him, he was unable to advance so far in any direction 

 as Cook had gone in 1778. In 1820, two other vessels were sent 

 to that part of the ocean, with the same objects ; but no detailed 

 account of their voyage has been made public. In the mean time, 

 however, the doubts as to the separation of the two continents were 

 completely removed, by Captains Wrangel and Anjou, who sur- 

 veyed the eastern parts of the Siberian coast with great care, in 

 defiance of the most dreadful difficulties and dangers.f 



Nor did the Russians neglect to improve the administration of 

 their affairs on the North Pacific coasts. In 1817, Captain Golow- 

 nin was despatched from Europe, in the sloop of war Kamtchatka, 

 with a commission from the emperor to inquire into the state of the 

 Russian dominions in America ; and, upon the report brought back 

 by him, it was resolved that a radical change should be made in the 

 management of those possessions. Accordingly, upon the renewal 

 of the charter of the company on the Sth of July, 1819, regulations 

 were put in execution, by which the governor and other chief 

 officers of Russian America became directly responsible for their 



* For further particulars on this subject, the reader — if he should consider the 

 matter worth investigating — may consult Kotzebue's narrative of his voyage to the 

 Pacific, in 1815-16, and Jarves's History of the Sandwich Islands. 



t See the agreeable and instructive narrative, by Kotzebue, of his voyage in search 

 of a north-east passage. Wrangel's account of his expedition, which has been re- 

 cently published, is a most interesting work, not only from the multitude of new facts 

 in geography, and in many of the physical sciences, which it communicates, but also 

 from the admiration which it inspires for the courage, good temper, and good feeling, 

 of the adventurous narrator. Wrangel has since been, for many years, the governor- 

 general of Russian America, and is now an admiral in the service of his country. 



