XIII.] 
BILLINGS’ EXPEDITION. 
211 
approximately repeated the year after Cook’s death by his 
successor Charles Clarke, but without any new discoveries 
being made in the region in question. 
1785-94.—The success which attended Cook in his exploratory 
voyages and the information, unlooked for even by the Russian 
government, which Coxe’s work gave concerning the voyages of 
the Russian hunters in the North Pacific, led to the equipment 
of a grand new expedition, having for its object the further 
exploration of the sea which bounds the great Russian Empire 
on the north and east. The plan was drawn up by Pallas and 
Coxe, and the carrying out of it was entrusted to an English 
naval officer in the Russian service, J. Billings, who had taken 
part in Cook’s last voyage. Among the many others who were 
members of the expedition, may be mentioned Dr. Merk, 
Dr. Robeck, the secretary Martin Sauer, and the Captains 
Hall, Sarytchev, and Behring the younger, in all more 
than a hundred persons. The expedition was fitted out on a 
very large scale, but in consequence of Billings’ unfitness for 
having the command of such an expedition the result by no 
means corresponded to what might reasonably have been expected. 
The expedition made an inconsiderable excursion into the Polar 
chotsTci^ who lived in a constant state of warfare with the Giuchieglii, who 
inhabited the islands in the sound. Wrangel Land is also shown in this 
remarkable map. In 1767, eleven years before Cook’s voyage in the Polar 
Sea, the American side of Behring’s Straits was also visited by Lieut. Synd 
with a Russian expedition, that started from Okotsk in 1764. In the short 
account of the voyage which is to be found in William Coxe’s Account of 
the Russian Discoveries^ &c., London, 1780, p. 300, it is said expressly that 
Synd considered the coast on which he landed to belong to America. On 
Synd’s map, published by Coxe, the north part of the Behring Sea is 
enriched with a number of fictitious islands (St. Agaphonis, St. Myronis, 
St. Titi, St. Samuelis, and St. Andrese). As Synd, according to Sarytchev 
in the work quoted below, p. 11, made the voyage in a boat, it is probable 
that by these names islands were indicated which lay quite close to the 
coast and were not so far from land as shown in the map ; besides, the 
mountain-summits on St. Lawrence Island, which are separated by extensive 
low lands, may perhaps have been taken for separate islands. 
P 2 
