Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter XIII.
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others.” It is possible that Müller’s judgment is a trifle
one-sided, but it is nevertheless certain that Kosyrefski’s
description of the Kuriles is based on his own
explorations only in a very slight degree, and that he by no
means deserves the place that Peschel and Ruge have
accorded him. Nor did Lushin’s and Yevrinoff’s
expedition in the summer of 1721 get very far—scarcely
beyond the fifth or sixth island—and with them, until
Spangberg appeared on the scene, Russian explorations
in this quarter were at a standstill.
The expedition to Japan (1738) was undertaken with
three ships. Spangberg and Petroff sailed the
one-masted brig, the Archangel Michael, Lieutenant Walton
and first mate Kassimiroff the three-masted double sloop
Hope, and Second-Lieutenant Schelting had Bering’s
old vessel, the Gabriel. The Michael had a crew of
sixty-three, among them a monk, a physician, and an
assayer, and each of the other two ships had a crew of
forty-four. The flotilla left Okhotsk on the 18th of June,
1738, but was detained in the Sea of Okhotsk by ice,
and did not reach Bolsheretsk until the early part of
July. From here, on the 15th of July, Spangberg
departed for the Kuriles to begin charting.
The Kurile chain, the thousand islands or Chi-Shima,
as the Japanese call them, is 650 kilometers long. These
islands are simply a multitude of crater crests which
shoot up out of the sea, and on that account make
navigation very difficult. The heavy fog, which almost
continually prevails here, conceals all landmarks. In the
great depths, sounding afforded little assistance, and,
furthermore, around these islands and through the
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