PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
.577 
to the westward of Akoolee, there is much reason to believe, from the CHAP, 
articles of Asiatic manufacture found in their possession, that there is 
an occasional communication between all the tribes on the north coast Oct. 
of America. 
The subject of currents in Beering’s Strait has lost much of its 
interest by the removal of the doubt regarding the separation of the 
continents of Asia and America ; and it is now of importance only to 
the navigator, and to the natural phdosopher. 
It does not appear, from our passages across the sea of Ivams- 
chatka, that any great body of water flows towards Beering’s Strait. In 
one year the whole amount of current from Petrapaulski to St. Law- 
rence Island was S. 54° W. thirty-one miles, and in the next IST. 50° W. 
fifty-one miles, and from Kotzebue Sound to Oonemak jM. 79° W. 
seventy-nine miles. Approaching Beering’s Strait, the first year, with 
light southerly winds, it ran north sixteen miles per day ; and in the 
next, with strong S. W. winds, north five miles ; and with a strong 
N. E. wind, N. S4° W. twenty-three miles. Eeturning three different 
times with gales at N. W. there was no perceptible current. 
By these observations it appears, that near the strait with southerly 
and easterly winds there is a current to the northward ; but with northerly 
and north-westerly winds there is none to the southward, and conse- 
quently that the preponderance is in favour of the former, and of the 
generally received opinion of all persons who have navigated these seas. 
I prefer this method of arriving at the set of the current to giving 
experiments made occasionally with boats, as they would lead to a 
result, which would err according to the time of the tide at which they 
were made. 
To the northward of Beering’s Strait, the nature of the service 
we were employed upon confined us within a few miles of the coast ; 
there the northerly current was more ajDparent. We first detected 
it off Schismareff Inlet ; it increased to between one and two miles an 
hour off Cape Krusenstern, and arrived at its maximum, three miles an 
hour, off Point Hope : this was with the flood tide ; the ebb ran W. S. W. 
half a mile an hour. Here the current was turned off to the north- 
west by the point, and very little was afterwards felt to the northward. 
4 E 
