36 
SAliYTSCHEW’s TRAVELS. 
perpetually drifted towards the east. The tide along the shore 
changed every day, or every other day, and the water sometimes 
gained the height of a foot, but never exceeded it, and even 
that occurred without any regularity; which circumstance has 
given rise to the suggestion, that this sea cannot be of great ex¬ 
tent, being bounded at no great distance by land to the north, 
and connected by a straight to the Northern Ocean. It is other- 
wise not easy to account for this deviation from the universal 
law of nature with regard to great seas. 
The opinion that the continent lay in a northerly direction, 
was confirmed by a high south wind, on the 22d of J une, which 
continued with the greatest violence for 48 hours. Had there 
then been no hinderawce, the ice must have been necessarily 
driven very far towards the north: instead of which, we found 
the sea next morning quite covered. Captain Schmalew also 
informed me, that the Tsehukschians had spoken to him of a 
continent towards that poind, not very distant from the Scha- 
lagian promontory, which was inhabited; and at the same time 
they observed, that the Schlagian Tsehukschians used in winter 
to cross over to that place in a day. 
The wind becoming favourable on the 26th of July, we 
weighed anchor, and bore away, with a gentle breeze, to the 
mouth of the Kolyma, and from thence to Nishne-Kolymsk, 
where we landed in safety; and thus terminated our excursion in 
the Frozen Ocean, which was no less fatiguing than dangerous. 
.From the foregoing it is manifest, that any farther trial to cross 
the Frozen Ocean would have been fruitless. Mr. Billings 
therefore- assembled the officers to consult on the easiest and 
least dangerous method of encompassing, either by land or sea, 
the Ichalagian and Tschukotian promontory. The way by the 
mouth of the Kolyma had already been proved by experience 
to be blocked up by the immense masses of ice. For although 
the sea has been found by preceding navigators to be sometimes 
clear, yet none of these enterprising mariners have succeeded in 
opening the passage to the Eastern Ocean, except Deshnew, a 
single Kosak, who made the experiment in 1648, in a barge. 
Great'doubts, however, are entertained of his veracity, and it 
is strongly suspected, that Deshnew collected most of his in¬ 
formation respecting those shores from the Tsehukschians, and 
supplied the rest by his own invention. 
But granting the truth of Deshnew’s narrations, it only evinces 
that Nature may once in a hundred years deviate from her esta¬ 
blished rule. The Kosaks here assured us, that such quantities 
of ice are always in the sea as to prevent any one from going even 
out of the river, and they considered this summer as having been 
unusually favourable for such an enterprise. But if we judge from 
