evidently occasioned by his great predilection for keeping near the land.

Mr. Duncan remained the winter in Churchill River, which he did not leave till the 15th July following; he then entered Chesterfield Inlet, and returned to Churchill about the end of August; his crew, as he states in his journal, having mutinied, who were encouraged by his first officer, a servant of the Hudson's Bay Company. The mortification he suffered at the failure, and the grief and vexation occasioned by his turbulent crew, had such an effect on his mind, that a violent fever was the consequence; and the voyage proved completely abortive. Thus terminated the last, and, it may also be said, the least efficient of all the expeditions (that of Gibbons perhaps excepted) for the discovery of the north-west passage."

*MS. Journal of Mr. Duncan.

DISCOVERIES

MADE BY THE RUSSIANS ON THE

NORTHERN COAST OF SIBERIA DURING THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE Various voyages and partial discoveries of the Russians, along the shores of that widely extended empire, would scarcely admit of being brought separately into the chronological arrangement; but they have been collected and arranged with precision and ability by Mr. Coxe, in his interesting "Account of Russian Discoveries." The only part of them, which is here intended to be noticed, is that which relates to their several attempts to open a navigation between the White Sea and the Pacific, through the Northern or Tartarian Sea. The discovery and possession of Kamtschatka made such a communication the more desirable, and induced the Emperor Peter the Great to form a plan of discovery, the chief object of which was to ascertain "the separation, contiguity, or connection of Asia and America." For this purpose, he drew up with his own hand a minute of instructions, which, after his death, were immediately carried into execution by the Empress Catherine, who dispatched BEHRING, in 1728, from

Kamtschatka, in a vessel called the Fortune, manned with a crew of forty men and two lieutenants on this servicc. On the 10th August he fell in with the Island of St. Laurence, and continuing his course northerly till the 15th of the same month, found himself in latitude 67° 18'; and seeing no land either to the northward or the eastward, and the Asiatic continent trending to the westward, he conceived that he had fully established the fact of the separation of Asia and America, and had consequently executed his instructions; he thought it therefore prudent, at this advanced season of the year, to return to Kamtschatka.

The next point was to establish the fact, whether a practicable navigation existed between the White Sea and the sea of Kamtschatka. For this purpose various expeditions were undertaken, but none of them succeeded in performing the whole voyage, either at once or in successive trials; nor indeed is it quite clear that the whole navigation has ever been accomplished by different persons at different times, though the whole has unquestionably been done, with the exception of one "sacred promontory," between Yenisei and the Lena, called Cape Severo Vostochnoi or North-East Cape.

The first attempt from Archangel was in 1734, when Lieutenant MOROVIOF set sail for the Obe, but he reached no farther that year than the mouth of the Petchora. The following summer

he passed through the strait of Waigatz into the sea of Kara, along the western coast of which he navigated as high as latitude 72° 30', but did not succeed in doubling the Cape Olenei, which separates Kara from these a of Obe. But in 1738 Lieutenants MALGYN and SKURAKOF doubled that promontory, though not without great difficulty, and entered the bay of Obe. In the same year, two vessels under the Lieutenants OFFZIN and KOSKELEF passed round Cape Matzol, from the Bay of Obe to the mouth of the Yenisei, which had been frequently attempted without success; and in that year also the pilot, FEODOR MENIN, sailed from the mouth of the Yenisei towards the Lena, but being stopped by the ice at the mouth of the Piasida or Piacini, through which he was unable to find a passage, he returned to the Yenisei.

Lieutenant PRONTSHISTSHEF had attempted, in the year 1735, to proceed the contrary way from the Lena to the Yenisei. He found great difficulty in passing through the archipelago of islands lying at the mouth of the Lena, on account of the ice. Proceeding to the north-west, he observed many ice-islands, from twenty-four to sixty feet in height. He passed through narrow channels between fields of ice, and damaged his vessel so much, that on the 2d September he was compelled to seek shelter in the mouth of the Olenek or Olensk, where he passed the winter. He again

set sail, on the 1st August, and in three days reached the mouth of the Anabara, in latitude 73°, proceeded on his voyage on the 10th, passed through much ice, and was obliged to take shelter at the mouth of the Katanga, in latitude 75° nearly. Continuing along the shore to the northward, he reached Taimura on the 18th: a chain of islands stretching to the northward prevented his further progress, and with much difficulty he returned to the Olenek, which he reached on the 29th August. If this account given by Gmelin were correct, the promontory between the Katanga and the Taimura would have been doubled, and the difficulty surmounted. Muller, according to Coxe, says, that Prontshistshef did not quite reach the mouth of the Taimura; and that he was stopped by a chain of islands stretching from the continent far to the northward, the channels between which were choked with ice; and that, having worked among them as high as latitude 77° 25′, and seeing no prospect of forcing a passage, he returned to the Olenek.

The Russians, from Archangel and other ports, make annual voyages to the western coast of Nova Zembla for the purpose of catching seals, bears and sea-horses, but it does not appear that any vessel, excepting that of William Barentz, the Dutchman, ever passed the northern extremity to the eastern coast.

From the Lena eastward to the Kooyma, the