Note (return) — Chapter IV · TRANSACTIONS AMONGST THE NATIVES OF NORTH AMERICA; DISCOVERIES ALONG THAT COAST AND THE EASTERN EXTREMITY OF ASIA, NORTHWARD TO ICY CAPE; AND RETURN SOUTHWARD TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. (continued 2)

Here the N.E. wind left us, and was succeeded by light breezes from the N.W. which lasted for several days. I stood to the S.W. and W.S.W. till eight o'clock the next morning, when we tacked, and stood toward the shore. At noon, the latitude was 58° 22', and the longitude 220° 45'. Mount Fairweather, the peaked mountain over the Cape of the same name, bore N. 63° E.; the shore under it twelve leagues distant. This mountain, which lies in the latitude of 58° 52', and in the longitude of 222°, and five leagues inland, is the highest of a chain, or rather a ridge of mountains, that rise at the N.W. entrance of Cross Sound, and extend to the N.W. in a parallel direction with the coast. These mountains were wholly covered with snow, from the highest summit down to the sea-coast; some few places excepted, where we could perceive trees rising, as it were, out of the sea; and which, therefore, we supposed, grew on low land, or on islands bordering upon the shore of the continent.5 At five in the afternoon, our latitude being then 58° 53', and our longitude 220° 52', the summit of an elevated mountain appeared above the horizon, bearing N., 26° W., and, as was afterwards found, forty leagues distant. We supposed it to be Beering's Mount St Elias; and it stands by that name in our chart.