Note 55 — INTRODUCTION TO THE VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

The Russians seem to owe much to England in matters of this sort. 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 Mémoires Geographiques, &c. Lausanne, 1765; which, however, contains much real information; and many parts of which are confirmed by Captain Cook’s American discoveries.