the continent of America to the northward and eastward. I had the same thing previously in view but it would be vanity and presumption in me to attempt a task of the kind, while their means are so much superior, and those who are employed on it, authorized travellers. Thus circumstanced, it can create no surprize that an humble individual, like myself, should submit to make a sacrifice of private gratification, and every prospect of success, to a sense of the impropriety of proceeding farther at present, and of the indelicacy which would result from such a step; but, should the commander of the expedition, from any circumstances, desist from the further prosecution of his discoveries, I shall, in that case, continue my journey eastward'-the meaning of all which will, we think, be perfectly intelligible, from what we are about to stale. The expedition noticed by Captain Cochrane, consisted of two ship corvettes which left Spithead in the year 1819, at the same time that the expedition, alluded to in our first paragraph, proceeded to the southern hemisphere. In July, 1820, they reached Behring's Strait, and were supposed to have passed it in that year; they returned, however, in the winter to some of the Russian settlements, on the coast of America; and, as now appears from Captain Cochrane's letter to us, were again in that neighbourhood in June, 1821 of their ulterior proceedings no intelligence had reached Petersburgh at the period of the latest accounts from that capital. If they should have succeeded in doubling Icy Cape, it is just possible that they may fall in with Captain Parry, provided they are lucky enough to escape the fate of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his unfortunate associates: of such a catastrophe, we are by no means sure that they do not run a very considerable risk, from the slight and insufficient manner in which they were fitted out; being, in fact, destitute of every necessary for passing a winter in the frozen ocean, and, as we happen to know, in want even of the common implements for encountering the ice: with some of the latter, however, they were supplied from the dock-yard of Portsmouth, on application to the British government. We should not be disposed to detract from the merit which, in this instance, would be justly due to the Russian government, if we could persuade ourselves that the extension of geographical knowledge, for its own sake and the benefit of mankind, was the prime object of this expedition; but when we couple it with the cautious language of Captain Cochrane, and the sudden and unexpected check thrown in the way of his further progress, after reaching theshores of Behring's Strait, and also with a contemporaneous Ukase of a most extraordinary nature, (if we may credit what appears in the public journals,) we cannot but entertain some suspicion, z 2 that that his Imperial Majesty, in his northern expeditions, has been governed by other motives than those of merely advancing the cause of science and discovery. In this curious Manifesto, (for such, in effect, it is,) the maritime powers of Europe and America are given to understand that his Imperial Majesty of Russia has assumed possession of all that portion of the north-west coast of America, which lies between the fiftyfirst degree of latitude, and the Icy Cape, or extreme north; and, moreover, that he interdicts the approach of ships of every other nation to any part of this line nearer than one hundred miles. Whether this wholesale usurpation of 2000 miles of sea-coast, to the greater part of which Russia can have no possible claim, will be tacitly passed over by England, Spain, and the United States, the three powers most interested in it, we pretend not to know; but we can scarcely be mistaken in predicting that his Imperial Majesty will discover, at no distant period, that he has assumed an authority, and asserted a principle, which he will hardly be permitted to exercise; and that there is an ancient common law of nations which will not, and cannot, be abrogated by the sic volo' of a power of yesterday. It has apparently escaped the recollection of his Imperial Majesty's advisers, that if his example were to be followed by the maritime nations of Europe, his own ports would be hermetically sealed, and an end put at once to the assumption of long appropriated coasts by Russia. With respect to the legality of taking possession of an unoccupied territory, to the exclusion of the original discoverer, some doubts, we understand, are still entertained among jurists. It is time, we think, to come to a decision one way or another, on a point of so much importance. Let us examine, however, what claim Russia can reasonably set up to the territory in question. To the two shores of Behring's Strait, we admit, she would have an undoubted claim, on the score of priority of discovery; that on the side of Asia having been coasted by Deshnew in 1648, and that of America visited by Behring in 1741, as far down as the latitude 59°, and the peaked mountain, since generally known by the name of Cape Fairweather: to the southward of this point, however, Russia has not the slightest claim. The Spaniards visited the northern parts of this coast in 1774, when Don Juan Perez, in the corvette Santiago, traced it from latitude 53° 53′ to a promontory in latitude 55°, to which he gave the name of Santa Margarita, being the north-west extremity of Queen Charlotte's Island of our charts; and on his return, touched at Nootka, about which we were once on the point of going to war. In the following year, the Santiago and Felicidad, under the orders of Don Juan Bruno Heceta, and Don Juan de la Bodega y Quadra, proceeded along the north west west coast, and descried, in latitude 56° 8', high mountains covered with snow, which they named Jacinto; and also a lofty cape, in latitude 57° 2′, to which they gave the name of Engaño. Holding a northerly course, they reached lat. 57° 58′, and then returned. Three years after these Spanish voyages, Cook reconnoitred this coast more closely, and proceeded as high up as the Icy Cape; it was subsequently visited by several English ships for the purposes of trade; and though every portion of it was explored with the greatest accuracy by that most excellent and persevering navigator, Vancouver, as far as the head of Cook's Inlet, in lat. 61° 15'; yet, on the ground of priority of discovery, it is sufficiently clear that England has no claim to territorial possession. On this principle, it would jointly belong to Russia and Spain; but on the same principle, Russia would be completely excluded from any portion of it, to the southward of 59°. She has, however, been tacitly permitted to form an establishment, named Sitka, at the head of Norfolk Sound, in lat. 57°; and this, apparently, must have tempted her to presume, that no opposition would be offered to an extension of territory down to the fifty-first degree of latitude, which includes all the detailed discoveries of Cook and Vancouver, i. e. New Hanover, New Cornwall, New Norfolk on the main, and the Islands of King George, Queen Charlotte, and Prince of Wales upon the coast. There is, however, one trifling circumstance, of which we are persuaded his Imperial Majesty was ignorant, when he issued his sweeping Ukase, namely that the whole country, from lat. 56° 30′ to the boundary of the United States in lat. 48°, or thereabouts, is now, and has long been, in the actual possession of the British North-west Company. The communication with this vast territory is by the Peace River, which, crossing the Rocky Mountains from the westward, in lat. N. 56°, and long. 121° W., falls into the Polar Sea by the Mackenzie River. The country behind them, to the westward, has been named by the settlers New Caledonia, and is in extent, from north to south, about 500 miles, and from east to west 300 miles. It is described as very beautiful, abounding in fine forests, rivers, and magnificent lakes, one of which is not less than 300 miles in circumference, surrounded by picturesque mountains, clothed to their very summits with timber trees of the largest dimensions. From this lake, a river falls to the westward, into the Pacific, either into Port Essington, or Observatory Inlet, where Vancouver discovered the mouths of two rivers, one in lat. 54° 15′, the other in 54° 59′. In the summer season, it swarms with salmon, from which the natives derive a considerable part of their subsistence. The North-west Company have a post on its borders, in lat. 54° 30′ N. long. 125° W, distant about 180 miles from the Observatory Inlet' of Vancouver, the head of which lies in lat. 55° 15′ N z 3 long long. 129° 14′ W. where, by this time, the United Company of the North-west and Hudson's Bay have, in all probability, formed an establishment, and thus opened a direct communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the whole way by water, with the exception of a very few miles across the high lands, which divide the sources of the rivers and give them opposite directions. Thus then it is obvious, that, as we have actual possession of the six degrees of coast usurped by Russia, in her recent manifesto, her claim to this part is perfectly nugatory. Indeed, as we before observed, the assumption must have been made in utter ignorance of the fact, which is the less surprizing, as this part of the world remains, as yet, a complete blank on our best and latest charts. It is not easy to conjecture the precise object of Russia in this intended extension of territory on the continent of North America, unless it be to push along the northern coast as far as Mackenzie's River, which, running at the feet of the Rocky Mountains to the east, would, with the Pacific on the west, afford two excellent barriers to a territory of at least 70,000 square miles, or one-half nearly of all that part of North America in which the fur animals are found; and thus put the Russ-American Company in possession of an almost exclusive monopoly of the trade, as it is well known that, in a few years, the fur-bearing animals will all be destroyed on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. In any other view of the subject, it is utterly incomprehensible that the possession of one-tenth part of the habitable globe should not satisfy the ambition-if ambition could ever be satisfied-of one man. But, whatever the object of the Russian government may be in its expeditions and its edicts, that of the Voyage we are about to notice was purely the promotion of physical science and geographical discovery. We have more than once had occasion to mention, in terms of admiration, the liberal support which an exalted individual of the Russian empire has always been ready to give to every national scheme for enlarging the sphere of human knowledge: by this munificent patron, the present expedition was fitted out. That it failed in the main point was no fault of him who planned it. The commander was recommended by Capt. Krusenstern, than whom Russia cannot boast an officer more accomplished in every part of his profession; and if, on his return, he met, as we have heard, with a cool reception in the imperial circles of Petersburgh, it only proves that, amidst an affectation of disappointment, they were not very sorry for the failure of a private enterprize, which afforded an opportunity of attempting the same thing as a national measure; for the the two ships we have mentioned, (page 343.) were dispatched almost immediately after the return of Lieutenant Kotzebue. It had been the intention of Count Romanzoff to equip an expedition to explore the north-west passage by Hudson's Bay or Davis's Strait: but on finding that preparations were making in England to attempt it by that route, he determined on prosecuting the discovery from the eastward. For this purpose he caused a ship of 180 tons to be built of fir, at Abo, to which he gave the name of Rurick. Her establishment consisted of Lieut. Kotzebue, Lieut. Schischmareff, two mates, M. A. Voit Chamisso, of Berlin, naturalist, Dr. Eschholz, surgeon, M. Choris, painter, and twenty 'men; and, to the credit of the Commander, it may be mentioned that, after a navigation of three years in very opposite climates, and in so small a vessel, he lost one man only, who left the Baltic in a consumption. :. The Rurick sailed from Plymouth in October 1815; and on the 28th of March had reached that solitary spot in the midst of the Great Pacific, which bears the name of Zeapy, but which is better known as Easter Island. Some of the natives swam off to the Rurick with yams, taro roots, and bananas, which they gave in exchange for bits of iron hoops. As the boats approached the shore, they began to assemble in great numbers, and though unarmed, and apparently desirous of the strangers landing, they were thought to exhibit a terrific and hostile appearance, having painted their faces red, white, and black, and making all manner of violent gestures, accompanied with a most horrible noise this was soon ascertained to be the case; and the boats were repelled from the shore by vollies of stones. This conduct, so contrary to their former practice, was afterwards fully explained to Lieut. Kotzebue, when at the Sandwich Islands. An American, who commanded a schooner called the Nancy, from New London, having discovered a vast multitude of seals on the little uninhabited island of Massafuero, to the west of Juan Fernandez, thought it would be an excellent speculation to establish a colony there, in order to carry on the 'fishery; for this purpose, having but just sufficient hands to navigate his ship, and there being no anchorage off the island, the wretch (base and brutal beyond the ordinary degree of such characters) proceeded to Easter Island, and landing at Cook's Bay, succeeded in seizing and carrying off twelve men and ten women, to people his new colony. For the first three days they were confined in irons when fairly out of sight of land, however, they were released; and the first use made by the males of their liberty was to jump overboard, chusing rather to perish in the waves than to be carried away they knew not whither, or for what purpose: the women, who were with difficulty restrained from following them, were z 4 taken |