rth Pacific, led to the equipment of a grand new
expedition, having for its object the further exploration of the sea
which bounds the great Russian Empire on the north and east. The
plan was drawn up by Pallas and Coxe, and the carrying out of it was
entrusted to an English naval officer in the Russian service, J.
BILLINGS, who had taken part in Cook's last voyage. Among the many
others who were members of the expedition, may be mentioned Dr.
MERK, Dr. ROBECK, the secretary MARTIN SAUER, and the Captains HALL,
SARYTCHEV, and BEHRING the younger, in all more than a hundred
persons. The expedition was fitted out on a very large scale, but in
consequence of Billings' unfitness for having the command of such an
expedition the result by no means corresponded to what might
reasonably have been expected. The expedition made an inconsiderable
excursion into the Polar Sea from the 30th/19th June to the 9th
Aug/29th July 1787, and in 1791 Billings sailed up to St. Lawrence
Bay, from which he went over land with eleven men to Yakutsk. The
rest of this lengthened expedition does not concern the regions now
in question.[338]
Among voyages during the century it remains to give account of those
which have been made by OTTO VON KOTZEBUE, who during his famous
circumnavigation of the globe in 1815-18, among other things also
passed through Behring's Straits and discovered the strata,
remarkable in a geological point of view, at Eschscholz Bay; LUeTKE,
who during his circumnavigation of the globe in 1826-29, visited the
islands and sound in the neighbourhood of Chukotskoj-nos; MOORE, who
wintered at Chukotskoj-nos in 1848-49, and gave us much interesting
information as to the mode of life of the Namollos and Chukches;
KELLET, who in 1849 discovered Kellet Land and Herald Island on the
coast of Wrangel Land; JOHN RODGERS, who in 1855 carried out for the
American government much important hydrographical work in the seas
on both sides of Behring's Straits; DALLMANN, who during a trading
voyage in the Behring Sea landed at various points on Wrangel Land;
LONG, who in 1867, as captain of the whaling barque _Nile_,
discovered the sound between Wrangel Land and the mainland (Long
Sound) and penetrated from Behring's Straits westwards farther than
any of his predecessors, DALL, who, at the same time that we are
indebted to him for many important contributions to the knowledge of
the natural conditions of the Behring Sea, also anew examined th
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