[Footnote 8:  There is nothing at all unlikely in the voyage now spoken of.  According to Captain Krusenstern, whose information is in all probability quite unexceptionable, the Kuril islands and Jesso have been often visited by Russian merchants since 1741, when Spanberg and Walton reached the coast of Japan; though without any positive advantage, he says, accruing either to science or commerce from their visits.—­E.]

The next morning, he would fain have made me a present of a sea-otter skin, which, he said, was worth eighty rubles at Kamtschatka.  However, I thought proper to decline it; but I accepted of some dried fish, and several baskets of the lily, or saranne root, which is described at large in the History of Kamtschatka.[9] In the afternoon, Mr Ismyloff, after dining with Captain Clerke, left us with all his retinue, promising to return in a few days.  Accordingly, on the 19th, he made us another visit, and brought with him the charts before-mentioned, which he allowed me to copy, and the contents of which furnish matter for the following observations:—­

There were two of them, both manuscripts, and bearing every mark of authenticity.  The first comprehended the Penschinskian Sea, the coast of Tartary, as low as the latitude of 41 deg., the Kuril islands, and the peninsula of Kamtschatka.  Since this map had been made, Wawseelee Irkecchoff, captain of the fleet, explored, in 1758, the coast of Tartary, from Okotsk, and the river Amur, to Japan, or 41 deg. of latitude.  Mr Ismyloff also informed us, that great part of the sea-coast of the peninsula of Kamtschatka had been corrected by himself, and described the instrument he made use of, which must have been a theodolite.  He also informed us, that there were only two harbours fit for shipping, on all the east coast of Kamtschatka, viz. the bay of Awatska, and the river Olutora, in the bottom of the gulf of the same name, that there was not a single harbour upon its west coast, and that Yamsk was the only one on all the west side of the Penschinskian Sea, except Okotsk, till we come to the river Amur.  The Kuril islands afford only one harbour, and that is on the N.E. side of Mareekan, in the latitude of 47-1/2 deg., where, as I have before observed, the Russians have a settlement.

[Footnote 9:  English translation, p. 83, 84.]

The second chart was to me the most interesting; for it comprehended all the discoveries made by the Russians to the eastward of Kamtschatka, toward America, which, if we exclude the voyage of Beering and Tscherikoff, will amount to little or nothing.  The part of the American coast, with which the latter fell in, is marked in this chart, between the latitude of 58 deg. and 58-1/2 deg., and 75 deg. of longitude from Okotsk, or, 218-1/2 deg. from Greenwich; and the place where the former anchored, in 59-1/2 deg. of latitude, and 63-1/2 deg. of longitude from Okotsk, or 207 deg.