was informed,
that its direction was to the eastward. It is said to have been since
accurately surveyed by Shalauroff, whose chart makes it trend to the N.E.
by E., as far as the Shelatskoi Noss, which he places about forty-three
leagues to the eastward of the Kovyma. The space between this Noss and Cape
North, about eighty-two leagues, is therefore the only part of the Russian
empire that now remains unascertained.

But if the river Kovyma be erroneously situated with respect to its
longitude, as well as in its latitude, a supposition for which probable
grounds are not wanting, the extent of the unexplored coast will become
proportionably diminished. The reasons which incline me to believe that the
mouth of this river is placed in the Russian charts much too far to the
westward, are as follow: First, because the accounts that are given of the
navigation of the Frozen Sea from that river, round the N.E. point of Asia
to the gulf of Anadir, do not accord with the supposed distance between
those places. Secondly, because the distance over land from the Kovyma to
the Anadir is represented by the early Russian travellers as a journey
easily performed, and of no very extraordinary length. Thirdly, because the
coast from the Shelatskoi Noss of Shalauroff[28] seems to trend directly
S.E. to the East Cape. If this be so, it will follow, that as we were
probably not more than 1 deg. to the southward of Shelatskoi Noss, only sixty
miles of the Asiatic coast remain unascertained.[29]

Had Captain Cook lived to this period of our voyage, and experienced, in a
second attempt, the impracticability of a N.E. or N.W. passage from the
Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, he would doubtless have laid before the
public, in one connected view, an account of the obstacles which defeated
this, the primary object of our expedition, together with his observations
on a subject of such magnitude, and which had engaged the attention and
divided the opinions of philosophers and navigators for upward of two
hundred years. I am very sensible how unequal I am to the task of supplying
this deficiency; but that the expectations of the reader may not be wholly
disappointed, I must beg his candid acceptance of the following
observations, as well as of those I have already ventured to offer him,
relative to the extent of the N.E. coast of Asia.

The evidence that has been so fully and judiciously stated in the
introduction, amounts to the highest degree of pro