mong other things, that in
order to obtain metal for making a still, he ordered all the copper
belonging to the crown which he carried with him, to be melted down.
When the Cossacks first came to Kamchatka and were almost without a
contest, acknowledged as masters of the country, they found life
there singularly agreeable, with one drawback--there were no means
of getting drunk. Finally, necessity compelled the wild adventurers
to betake themselves to what we should now call chemico-technical
experiments, which are described in considerable detail by
Krascheninnikov (_loc. cit._ ii. p. 369). After many failures they
finally succeeded in distilling spirits from a sugar-bearing plant
growing in the country, and from that time this drink, or _raka_, as
they themselves call it, has been found in great abundance in that
country. ]

[Footnote 310: He afterwards became a monk under the name of
Ignatiev, came to St. Petersburg in 1730, and himself wrote a
narrative of his adventures, discoveries, and services, which was
printed first in the St. Petersburg journals of the 26th March,
1730, and likewise abroad (_Mueller_, iii. p. 82) ]

[Footnote 311: Von Baer, _Beitraege zur Kentniss des Russischen
Reiches_, xvi. p. 33. ]

[Footnote 312: Ambjoern Molin, lieutenant in the Scanian cavalry
regiment, who was taken prisoner at the Dnieper in 1709, also took
part in these journeys. Compare _Beraettelse om de i Stora Tartariet
boende tartarer, som traeffats laengst nordost i Asien, pa aerkebiskop
E. Benzelii begaeran upsatt af Ambjoern Molin (Account of the Tartars
dwelling in Great Tartary who were met with at the north east
extremity of Asia, written at the request of Archbishop E. Benzelius
by Ambjoern Molin_), published in Stockholm in 1880 by Aug.
Strindberg, after a manuscript in the Linkoeping library. ]

[Footnote 313: Mueller, iii. p. 102. According to an oral
communication by Busch, Strahlenberg's account (p. 17) of this
voyage appears to contain several mistakes. The year is stated as
1713, the return voyage is said to have occupied six days. ]

[Footnote 314: As late as 1819, James Burney, first lieutenant on one
of Captain Cook's vessels during his voyage north of Behring's
Straits, afterwards captain and member of the Royal Society,
considered it not proved that Asia and America are separated by a
sound. For he doubted the correctness of the accounts of Deschnev's
voyage. Compare James Burney, _A Chronological Hist