PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
245 
We had now advanced sufficiently far to the northward to carry CHAP, 
on our operations at midnight ; an advantage in the navigation of an 
unfrequented sea which often precludes the necessity of lying to. juiy. 
It was on one of those beautiful still nights, well known to all who 
have visited the arctic regions, when the sky is without a cloud, and when 
the midnight sun, scarcely his own diameter below the horizon, tinges 
with a bright hue all the northern circle — when the ship, propelled 
by an increasing breeze, glides rapidly along a smooth sea, startling 
from her path flocks of lummes and dovekies, and other aquatic birds, 
whose flight may, from the stillness of the night, be traced by the ear to 
a considerable distance — that we approached the strait that separates the 
two great continents, not a little anxious that the fog, the almost certain 
successor to a fine day in high latitudes, should hold off until we had 
satisfactorily decided a geographical question of some importance, as 
connected with our immortal countryman. Captain Cook. That excel- 
lent navigator, in his discoveries of these seas, placed three islands in the 
middle of the strait (the Diomede Islands). Kotzebue, however, in 
passing them, fancied he saw a fourth, and conjectured that it must have 
been either overlooked by Cook and Clerke, or that it had been since 
raised by an earthquake > The hope of being the first to determine the 
question, added to a patriotic feeling for the honour of our countrymen, 
increased in an especial degree our anxiety to advance. The land on the 
south side of St. Lawrence Bay first made its appearance, and next the - 
lofty mountains at the back of Cape Prince of Wales, then hill after hill 
rose alternately on either bow, curiously refracted, and assuming all the 
varied forms which that phenomenon of the atmosphere is known to oc- 
casion. At last, at the distance of fifty miles, the Diomede Islands, and 
the eastern Cape of Asia, rose above the horizon of our mast-head. But, 
as if to teach us the necessity of patience in the sea we were about to 
navigate, before we had satisfied our doubts, a thick fog enveloped every 
thing in obscurity. We continued to run on, assisted by a strong 
northerly current, until seven o’clock the next morning, when the 
* Some doubt, it appears, was created in the minds of the Russians themselves as to 
'-his supposed discovery, as we understood at Petropaulski, that a large wager had been laid 
shout it. 
