all doubts, he says, being now solved, not by calculation, but by
ocular demonstration. Its latitude and longitude, are well ascertained: he
places this cape half a degree more to the northward than Baron Wrangel;
but it is doubtful whether he himself reached it, and if he did, whether he
had the means of fixing its latitude, or whether he depends entirely on the
information he received at the fair of Tchutski. His expressions, in a
letter to the President of the Royal Society, are, "No land is considered
to exist to the northward of it. The east side of the Noss is composed of
bold and perpendicular cliffs, while the west side exhibits gradual
declivities; the whole most sterile, but presenting an awfully magnificent
appearance." From the fair he seems to have returned to Kolyma, and thence
proceeded to Okotsk, a dangerous, difficult, and fatiguing journey of three
thousand versts, a great part performed on foot, in seventy days. From this
last place he proceeded to Kamschatka, where it is supposed he was obliged
to terminate his investigations, in consequence of an order or intimation
from the Russian government not to proceed further.

We must next direct our attention to what has been done since the
commencement of the eighteenth century, toward discovering a passage in the
north-east of America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

One of the conditions on which the Hudson's Bay Company obtained their
charter, in the year 1670, from Charles II., was, that they should
prosecute their discoveries; but so far from doing this, they are accused,
and with great appearance of reason, of not only suffering their ardour for
discovery to cool, but also of endeavouring to conceal, as much as
possible, the true situation and nature of the coast about Hudson's Bay,
partly in order to secure more effectually their monopoly, and partly from
the dread they entertained, that if a passage to the Pacific were
discovered by this route, government would recal their charter, and grant
it to the East India Company. They were indeed roused, but very
ineffectively, from their torpor, by one of their captains intimating, that
if they refused to fulfill the terms of their charter, by making
discoveries, and extending their trade, he would himself apply to the
crown. In order to silence him, they sent him and another captain out in
two vessels, in 1719 or 1720; but they both perished, it is supposed, near
Marble Island, without effecting a