180 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
building of the vessel, wbich was launched on the ; 
and on the of the same month Behring began his voyage. 
He sailed in a north-easterly direction along the coast of 
Kamchatka, which he surveyed. On the fth August in 64° 30' 
N.L. he fell in with Chukches, who had still a reputation among 
the Russians for invincible courage and ferocity. First one of 
them came to the vessel, swimming on two inflated seal-skins, 
“ to inquire what was intended by the vessel’s coming thither,” 
after which their skin-boat lay to. Conversation was carried on 
with them by means of a Koryak interpreter. On the 
August St. Lawrence Island was discovered, and on the J^th of 
the same month the explorers sailed past the north-eastern 
promontory of Asia in 67° 18' and observed that the coast trends 
to the west from that point, as the Chukches had before informed 
them. Behring on this account considered that he had fulfilled 
his commission to ascertain whether Asia and America were 
separated, and he now determined to turn, “ partly because if the 
voyage were continued along the coast ice might be met with, 
from which it might not be so easy to get clear, partly on account 
of the fogs, which had already begun to prevail, and partly 
because it would be impossible, if a longer stay were made 
in these regions, to get back the same summer to Kamchatka. 
There could be no question of passing the winter off the coast 
of the Chukch Peninsula, because that would have been to expose 
the expedition to certain destruction, either by being wrecked on 
the jagged rocks of the open unknown coast, or by perishing from 
want of fuel, or finally by dying under the hands of the fierce 
unconquered Chukches.” On the the vessel returned to 
Nischni Kamchatskoj Ostrogd It was during this voyage that 
^ A short, but instructive account of Behring's first voyage, based on an 
official communication from the Russian Government to the King of Poland, 
is inserted in t. iv. p. 561 of Description geographique de VEmpire de la 
Chine, par le P. J. B. Du Halde, La Haye, 1736. The same official report 
was probably" the source of Muller’s brief sketch of the voyage {Milller, 
