This Enterprize Was Undertaken By
Henry Dundas Cochrane, A Commander In The British Navy; Who Received
Assurances From The Russian
Government that he should not be molested on
his journey; that he should receive any assistance, protection, and
facilities he
Should require; and that he might join an expedition sent by
the Russian government toward the Pole, if he should meet it, and accompany
it as far as he might be inclined. He left Petersburgh in the beginning of
the summer of 1820, and in one hundred and twenty-three days reached the
Baikal, having traversed eight thousand versts of country, at the rate of
forty-three miles a day. He seems afterwards to have gone as far as the
Altai Mountains, on the frontiers of China. As, however, his principal
object was to explore the extreme north-east of Asia, he went down the
Lena, and reached Jakutzk on the 16th of October, 1820. On the Kolyma,
where he arrived on the 30th of December, in longitude 164 deg., he met the
Russian polar expedition. From Jakutzk to this place he travelled four
hundred miles, without meeting a single human being. At the fair held at
Tchutski, whither he next directed his steps, he received much information
respecting the northeast of Asia. He ascertained the existence of this
cape; 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.
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