note 11: A Russian ship had been at Kodiak in 1776, as appears
from a MS. obligingly communicated by Mr Pennant.--D.]

I have already observed, that the American continent is here called
by the Russians, as well as by the islanders, Alaschka; which name,
though it properly belong only to the country adjoining to Oonemak, is
used by them when speaking of the American continent in general, which
they know perfectly well to be a great land.

This is all the information I got from these people, relating to the
geography of this part of the world; and I have reason to believe that
this was all the information they were able to give. For they assured
me, over and over again, that they knew of no other islands, besides
those which were laid down upon this chart; and that no Russian had
ever seen any part of the continent of America to the northward,
except that which lies opposite the country of the Tschutskis.

If Mr Staehlin was not grossly imposed upon, what could induce him
to publish a map so singularly erroneous, and in which many of these
islands are jumbled together in regular confusion, without the least
regard to truth; and yet he is pleased to call it _a very accurate
little map_.[12] Indeed, it is a map to which the most illiterate of
his illiterate sea-faring countrymen would have been ashamed to set
his name.

[Footnote 12: Staehlin's New Northern Archipelago, p. 15.]

Mr Ismyloff remained with us till the 21st, in the evening, when he
took his final leave. To his care I intrusted a letter to the Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty, in which was inclosed a chart of
all the northern coasts I had visited. He said there would be an
opportunity of sending it to Kamtschatka, or Okotsk, the ensuing
spring, and that it would be at Petersburg the following winter. He
gave me a letter to Major Behm, governor of Kamtschatka, who
resides at Bolscheretsk, and another to the commanding officer,
at Petropaulowska. Mr Ismyloff seemed to have abilities that might
entitle him to a higher station in life, than that in which we found
him. He was tolerably well versed in astronomy, and in the most useful
branches of the mathematics. I made him a present of an Hadley's
octant; and though, probably, it was the first he had ever seen, he
made himself acquainted, in a very short time, with most of the uses
to which that instrument can be applied.

In the morning of the 22d, we made an attempt to get to sea, with
the wind at S.E.