of east longitude; in breadth
their conquests extended from the fiftieth to the seventy-fifth degree of
north latitude. This conquest was completed by a Cossack; another Cossack,
as Malte Brun observes, effected what the most skilful and enterprising of
subsequent navigators have in vain attempted. Guided by the winds, and
following the course of the tides, the current and the ice, he doubled the
extremity of Asia from Kowyma to the river Anadyn. Kamschatcka, however,
which is their principal settlement in the east of Asia, was not discovered
till the year 1690; five years afterwards they reached it by sea from
Ochotsk, but for a long time it was thought to be an island. The Kurile
Islands were not discovered till the beginning of the eighteenth century.
The direction of discovery to this part of the world, as well as the plan
by which it might be most advantageously and successfully executed, was
given by Peter the Great, and affords one proof, that his mind was
capacious, though his manners, morals, and conduct, might be those of a
half-civilized tyrant. Peter did not live to carry his plan into execution:
it was not, however, abandoned or neglected; for certainly the Russian
government, much more than any other European government, seems to pursue
with a most steady and almost hereditary predilection, all the objects
which have once occupied its attention and warmed its ambition.
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