Description

Late in her reign, in 1785, Empress Catherine the Great commissioned a Russian naval survey under the command of Captain Joseph Billings that was known as the Northeastern Geographical and Astronomical Expedition. Billings, an Englishman in the service of the Russian state, set out that year with two assistant captains, Gavriil Sarychev and Robert Hall (Roman Gall in Russian usage). This volume chronicles Billings’s explorations in 1791 on the ship Glory of Russia, accompanied by Sarychev, along the Chukotka Peninsula from the Bering Strait westward to the Lower Kolyma ...