ed with grass; so that the people of the village were at no
trouble to find them lodging. Ismyloff having invited us into his
tent, set before us some dried salmon and berries, which, I was
satisfied, was the best cheer he had. He appeared to be a sensible
intelligent man; and I felt no small mortification in not being able
to converse with him, unless by signs, assisted by figures and other
characters, which however were a very great help. I desired to see
him on board the next day; and accordingly he came, with all his
attendants. Indeed, he had moved into our neighbourhood, for the
express purpose of waiting upon us.

I was in hopes to have had by him, the chart which his three
countrymen had promised, but I was disappointed. However, he assured
me I should have it; and he kept his word. I found that he was very
well acquainted with the geography of these parts, and with all the
discoveries that had been made in them by the Russians. On seeing the
modern maps, he at once pointed out their errors. He told me, he
had accompanied Lieutenant Syndo, or Synd as he called him, in his
expedition to the north; and, according to his account, they did not
proceed farther than the Tschukotskoi Noss, or rather than the bay
of St Laurence, for he pointed on our chart to the very place where I
landed. From thence, he said, they went to an island in latitude 63 deg.,
upon which they did not land, nor could he tell me its name. But I
should guess it to be the same to which I gave the name of Clerke's
Island. To what place Synd went after that, or in what manner he spent
the two years, during which, as Ismyloff said, his researches lasted,
he either could not or would not inform us. Perhaps he did not
comprehend our enquiries about this; and yet, in almost every other
thing, we could make him understand us. This created a suspicion,
that he had not really been in that expedition, notwithstanding his
assertion.

Both Ismyloff and the others affirmed, that they knew nothing of the
continent of America to the northward; and that neither Lieutenant
Synd, nor any other Russian, had ever seen it. They call it by
the same name which Mr Staehlin gives to his great island, that is
Alaschka. Stachtan Nitada, as it is called in the modern maps, is a
name quite unknown to these people, natives of the islands as well as
Russians; but both, of them know it by the name of America. From what
we could gather from Ismyloff and his countrymen, the Rus