he oakum between the planks having been washed out. The
warm weather we had in the middle of the day, began to make the ice break
away very fast, which, drifting with the tide, had almost filled up the
entrance of the bay. Several of our gentlemen paid their visits to the
serjeant, by whom they were received with great civility; and Captain
Clerke sent him two bottles of rum, which he understood would be the most
acceptable present he could make him, and received in return some fine
fowls of the grouse kind, and twenty trouts. Our sportsmen met with but bad
success; for though the bay swarmed with flocks of ducks of various kinds,
and Greenland pigeons, yet they were so shy that they could not come within
shot of them.

In the morning of the 1st of May, seeing the Discovery standing into the
bay, a boat was immediately sent to her assistance; and in the afternoon
she moored close by us. They told us, that after the weather cleared up on
the 28th, they found themselves to leeward of the bay; and that when they
got abreast of it the following day, and saw the entrance choked up with
ice, they stood off, after firing guns, concluding we could not be here;
but finding afterward it was only loose drift ice, they had ventured in.
The next day the weather was so very unsettled, attended with heavy showers
of snow, that the carpenters were not able to proceed in their work. The
thermometer stood at 28 deg. in the evening, and the frost was exceedingly
severe in the night.

The following morning, on our observing two sledges drive into the village,
Captain Clerke sent me on shore, to enquire whether any message was arrived
from the commander of Kamtschatka, which, according to the serjeant's
account, might now be expected, in consequence of the intelligence that had
been sent of our arrival. Bolcheretsk, by the usual route, is about one
hundred and thirty-five English miles from Saint Peter and Saint Paul's.
Our dispatches were sent off in a sledge drawn by dogs, on the 29th, about
noon. And the answer arrived, as we afterward found, early this morning; so
that they were only a little more than three days and a half in performing
a journey of two hundred and seventy miles.

The return of the commander's answer was, however, concealed from us for
the present; and I was told, on my arrival at the serjeant's, that we
should hear from him the next day. Whilst I was on shore, the boat which
had brought me, together with another belo