id contents of his new discoveries of American land farther west and
north than had hitherto been traced.--D.]

[Footnote 47: The Russians seem to owe much to England, in matters
respecting their own possessions. It is singular enough that one of our
countrymen, Dr Campbell, (see his edition of Harris's voyages, vol. ii.
p. 1021) has preserved many valuable particulars of Beering's first
voyage, of which Muller himself, the historian of their earlier
discoveries, makes no mention; that it should be another of our
countrymen, Mr Coxe, who first published a satisfactory account of their
later discoveries; and that the King of Great Britain's ships should
traverse the globe in 1778, to confirm to the Russian empire the
possession of near thirty degrees, or above six hundred miles, of
continent, which Mr Engel, in his zeal for the practicability of a
north-east passage, would prune away from the length of Asia to the
eastward. See his _Alanoires Geographiques_, &c. Lausanne 1765; which,
however, contains much real information, and many parts of which are
confirmed by Captain Cook's American discoveries.--D.

It shews some inconsistency in Captain Krusenstern, that whilst he
speaks of the too successful policy of the commercial nations of Europe
to lull Russia into a state of slumber as to her interests, he should
give us to understand, that the same effect which Captain Cook's third
voyage produced on the speculative and enterprising spirit of English
merchants, had been occasioned among his countrymen forty years sooner,
by the discovery of the Aleutic islands and the north-west coast of
America. But, in fact, it is the highest censure he could possibly have
passed on his own government, to admit, that it had been subjected to
such stupifying treatment. This it certainly could not have been,
without the previous existence of such a lethargy as materially
depreciates the virtue of any opiate employed. There is no room,
however, for the allegation made; and the full amount of her slumber is
justly imputable to the gross darkness which so long enveloped the
horizon of Russia. Whose business was it to rouse her? What nation could
be supposed to possess so much of the spirit of knight-errantry, as to
be induced to instruct her savages as to the advantages of cultivating
commerce, without a cautious regard to its own particular interests in
the first place? But the bold, though somewhat impolitic seaman, has
perhaps stumbled on