PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
241 
one towards the eastern part of the indentation in the coast line, off CHAP, 
which there was a small low island or projecting point of land. This, 
in all probability, is the harbour alluded to by Krenitzen, as there were July, 
near it “ two small hillocks like boats, with their keels upwards.” 
We did not see the south-eastern part of this island, as it was ob- 
scured by fog, but sailed along the southern and western shores as near as 
circumstances permitted until seven in the evening, when we got out of 
the region of clear weather, which usually obtains in the vicinity or to 
leeward of land in these seas, and entered a thick fog. With the sum- 
mer characteristics of this latitude — fine weather and a thick fog — we 
advanced to the northward, attended by a great many birds, nearly all 
of the same kind as those which inhabit the Greenland Sea, sheerwaters, 
lummes, puffins, parasitic gulls, stormy petrel, dusky albatross, a larus 
resembling the kittiwake, a small dove-coloured tern, and shags. In 
latitude 60° 47' N. we noticed a change in the colour of the water, 
and on sounding found fifty-four fathoms, soft blue clay. From that 
time until we took our final departure from this sea the bottom Mas 
alw'ays within reach of our common lines. The water shoaled so 
gradually that at midnight on the l6th, after having run a hundred 
and fifty miles, we had thirty-one fathoms. Here the ground changed 
from mud to sand, and apprized us of our approach to the Island 
of St. Lawrence, which on the following morning was so close to us 
that we could hear the surf upon the rocks. The fog was at the same 
time so thick that we could not see the shore ; and it was not until 
some time afterwards, when we had neared the land by means of a 
long ground swell, for it was quite calm, that we discerned the tops of 
the hills. 
It is a fortunate circumstance that the dangers in these seas are 
not numerous, otherunse the prevalence of fogs in the summer time 
Would render the navigation extremely hazardous. About noon we 
Were enabled to see some little distance around us ; and, as we expected, 
the ship was close off the M estern extremity of St. Lawrence Island. In 
this situation the nearest hills, which were about five hundred feet above 
the sea, were observed to be surmounted by large fragments of rock 
having the appearance of ruins. These hills terminate to the southward 
