[Footnote 45: _Ibid_. p. 507. We learn from Maurelle's Journal, that another voyage had been some time before performed upon the coast of America; but the utmost northern progress of it was to latitude 55°.--D.] [Footnote 46: See Coxe's Russian Discoveries, p. 26, 27, &c. The fictions of speculative geographers in the southern hemisphere, have been continents; in the northern hemisphere, they have been seas. It may be observed, therefore, that if Captain Cook in his first voyages annihilated imaginary southern lands, he has made amends for the havock, in his third voyage, by annihilating imaginary northern seas, and filling up the vast space which had been allotted to them, with the solid contents of his new discoveries of American land farther west and north than had hitherto been traced.--D.] [Footnote 47: The Russians seem to owe much to England, in matters respecting their own possessions. 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 _Alanoires Geographiques_, &c. Lausanne 1765; which, however, contains much real information, and many parts of which are confirmed by Captain Cook's American discoveries.--D.