ENPages That Mention Peter
The Chronological History of all the Voyages to the Arctic
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a general direction SE and of a chain of low mountains. Toward the sea, several cliff-like capes, about 500 feet in height, stand out. Between these capes, the shore is low and forms small inlets, but timber is nowhere to be seen, not even a little green grass is to be seen. What a contrast to the shores of America. In many places we saw large settlements, but could not approach them because of the ice.
Ice, head winds, and stormy weather prompted Mr. Shishmarev to abandon further attempts, and to sail to Mechegmenskaia Bay [Mechegmenan Bay] where he hoped to fortify his crew with fresh provisions. The Chukchi here received the Russians very amicably, and the chief delivered ten live deer to the sloop. Cap. Shishmarev collected, here, too, rather interesting information, discovering, at the same time, that among the Mechegmenskaia Chukchi lived four more nations, talking various languages different from the Chukchi dialect.
On Aug 15, Mr. Shishmarev left Mechegmenskaia Bay and went to St. Lawrence Island. Having surveyed its northern shore, and having established communications with the inhabitants, who, in his opinion, are much poorer than the Chukchi, Mr. Shishmarev went his way to St. Matthew Island, which was discovered in 1766 by Lieut. Sind. Determining the geographical location of this island and both [?] located near it, Mr. Shishmarev decided to end his voyage in arctic regions, and went toward the harbor of St. Peter and Paul ----------|
Dorothy Jean Ray, letter, to Edward Connery Lathem, 1970 July 9
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This expedition has received almost no attention in our English histories of Alaska, and so far I have not seen it mentioned in the Russian. Bancroft (p. 526) said, "No report of the expedition is extant," and neither Andrews (The Story of Alaska) or Hulley (Alaska, 1741-1953) mention it at all. Dall in Alaska and its History devotes only 62 words to it, without documentation, in a chronological listing of historical events (pp. 331, 332).
My first step in this search was to consult the Arctic Bibliography, which did not yield any results. My next step was to consult Wickersham's Bibliography of Alaskan Literature, 17241924, where I found three items, Nos. 6287, 6291, and 6292 pertaining to the journey. The first one is the long account that I mentioned in my letter to Peter-- an account of the two-year voyage of the Good Intent written by K. K. Hillsen, who was under Shishmarev. It contains valuable ethnographic and historic information about Alaska, St. Lawrence Island and Siberia. The second item contains only progress reports in 1820 of a few pages. No. 6292, I discovered, is a considerably shortened version of Hillsen's account written in German.
Of the above, we shall translate the Hillsen article and the progress reports, but there are two other articles that I want to include , and which I found purely by accident. During my incarceration in the Library of Congress last fall I checked the tables of contents of all journals that I thought might contain articles about the expeditions to Bering Strait: Morskoi Sbornik, Otechestvennye zapiski - [under.] 6287 Hillsen [set] in this (in which Hillsen's three-part article appeared), Sievernyi arkhiv, Vasiliev in this [under] 6291 -Syn otechestva, and Zapiski Gidrograficheskago Departamenta, etc., and the more recent journals and state and national ethnographic and historical series. In Zapiski Gidr. Dep. for 1851 I found the article, "Svedeniia o Chukchakh, Capt. Shishmarev," which contains his observations of the Chukchi in his journey of 1821.
Then, by pure change, I discovered Vassili Berkh's Khronologicheskaia istoriia vsiekh puteshestvii v sievernyia poliarnyia strany (Chronological history of all voyages to the Arctic), volumes I and II, 1821, 1823, in an uncatalogued collection of books that had come to the Smithsonian Libraries from William H. Dall's estate. I had inquired about Dall's manuscript collection, now in the Smithsonian, and the librarian Mr. Marquardt gave me permission to look through Dall's wonderful collection of books, which has now been broken up and is in the process of being catalogued.
I had never heard of this publication before (Berkh's history of the discovery of the Aleutians is well known and has even been translated). In volume two of the Chronological history of the voyages are good summaries of various northern expenditions up to the date of publication, including Vasiliev's and Shishmarev's two-year voyage.
At that time I had not see Lada-Mocarski's Bibliography of Books on
Journey of the sloop Good Intent to explore the Asiatic and American shores of Bering Strait, 1819 to 1822. Part three
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17th of September, it seemed to us like a tropical land. The tremendous Kronokski Volcano, consisting of red rock, was the first one to come into our sight at a distance of 80 miles. Other much lower mountains became visible only at a distance of 35 miles, which, of course, was because of the growing darkness. The mountains were still covered with vegetation and that is why they seemed so attractive. Dead nature in regions above Bering Strait tired us with its awful sterility.
Finally, after much suffering, sick and tired, we entered Avachinskaia Bay on the 21st, and the Harbor of Peter and Paul (Petropavlovsk) on the 22nd.
The "Discovery" had been here for ten days, and the boat, for three weeks.
With this I conclude the description of our voyage because the return journey from here to the fatherland took place in the countries described a long time ago. I will only say that after rounding Cape Horn and crossing the Atlantic Ocean, we arrived safely in Kronstadt in August, 1822 after a three-year voyage.