12 
Captain Burney on the geography of the 
for Captain Bering’s voyage, the question whether Asia and 
America were contiguous or separate, was regarded as unde- 
termined, and some Tschuktzki people, with whom Bering 
had communication, informed him that, 44 their countrymen 
“ who traded with the Russians on the river Kolyma, always 
44 went thither by land with their merchandize on sledges, 
44 drawn by rein-deer, and that they had never made the 
44 voyage by sea.” 
Mr. Muller has acknowledged that from the perusal of 
the papers found concerning the voyage of Deschnew, he 
adopted a belief which did not before prevail, and he re- 
garded it as a second discovery. Yet Mr. Muller’s own 
account fell very short of warranting a certainty of the man- 
ner in which Deschnew arrived at the Eastern Sea; and 
there is an irregularity in it which is perplexing. He says, 
* Deschnew in relating his adventures speaks only inciden- 
‘ tally of what happened to him by sea. We find no event 
* mentioned till he had reached the great cape of the 
‘ Tschuktzki. His relation , 4 says Mr. Muller,’ begins at this 
4 cape. It lies between the north and north-east, and turns 
‘ circular towards the river Anadir. Opposite to the cape 
4 are two islands, on which were seen men through whose 
4 lips were run pieces of the teeth of the sea horse. With a 
4 favourable wind one might sail from here to the Anadir in 
4 three days and three nights.’ 
The cape or promontory which is here described is evi- 
dently the Cape East in Bering’s Strait ; and in a subsequent 
part of the account, Deschnew is represented to have said 
that this Noss 4 on which the vessel of Ankudinow, (one of 
his companions) was wrecked, was not the first promontory 
