nmost of
the Kurile Islands. Further information about the countries lying
farther south was obtained from some Japanese who were shipwrecked
in 1710 on Kamchatka.

At first in order to get to Kamchatka the difficult detour by
Anadyrsk was taken. But in the year 1711 the commander at Okotsk,
SIN BOJARSKI PETER GUTUROV, was ordered, by the energetic promoter
of exploratory expeditions in Eastern Siberia, the Yakutsk
_voivode_, DOROFEJ TRAUERNICHT, to proceed by sea from Okotsk to
Kamchatka. But this voyage could not come off because at that time
there were at Okotsk neither seagoing boats, seamen, nor even men
accustomed to the use of the compass. Some years after the governor
Prince GAGARIN sent to that town IVAN SOROKAUMOV with twelve
Cossacks to make arrangements for this voyage. For want of ships and
seamen however this could not now be undertaken, and after
Sorokaumov had created great confusion he was imprisoned by the
authorities of the place, and sent back to the Governor. Peter I.
now commanded _that men acquainted with navigation should be sought
for among the Swedish prisoners of war and sent to Okotsk, that they
should build a boat there and, provided with a compass, go by sea
along with some Cossacks to Kamchatka and return_.[311] Thus
navigation began on the Sea of Okotsk Among the Swedes who opened
it, is mentioned HENRY BUSCH,[312] according to Strahlenberg a
Swedish corporal, who had previously been a ship-carpenter.
According to Mueller, who met with him at Yakutsk as late as 1736, he
was born at Hoorn in Holland, had served at several places as a
seaman, and finally among the Swedes as a trooper, until he was
taken prisoner at Viborg in 1706. He gave Mueller the following
account of his first voyage across the Sea of Okotsk.

After arriving at Okotsk they had built a vessel, resembling the
_lodjas_ used at Archangel and Mesen for sailing on the White Sea
and to Novaya Zemlya. The vessel was strong; its length was eight
and a half fathoms, its breadth three fathoms, the freeboard, when
the vessel was loaded, three and a half feet. The first voyage took
place in June 1716. The voyagers began to sail along the coast
towards the north-east, but an unfavourable wind drove the vessel,
almost against the will of the seafarers, right across the sea to
Kamchatka. The first land sighted was a cape which juts out north of
the river Tigil. Being unacquainted with the coast the seafarers
hesitated to land. Duri