About this time we began to brew a strong decoction of a species of dwarf- pine that grows here in great abundance, thinking that it might hereafter be useful in making beer, and that we should probably be able to procure sugar or molasses to ferment with it at Canton. At all events I was sure it would be serviceable as a medicine for the scurvy; and was more particularly desirous of supplying myself with as much of it as I could procure, because most of the preventatives we had brought out were either used, or spoiled by keeping. By the time we had prepared a hogshead of it, the ship's copper was discovered to be very thin, and cracked in many places. This obliged me to desist, and to give orders that it should be used as sparingly for the future as possible. It might, perhaps, be an useful precaution for those who may hereafter be engaged in long voyages of this kind, either to provide themselves with a spare copper, or to see that the copper usually furnished be of the strongest kind. The various extra- services, in which it will be found necessary to employ them, and especially the important one of making antiscorbutic decoctions, seem absolutely to require some such provision; and I should rather recommend the former, on account of the additional quantity of fuel that would be consumed in heating thick coppers. In the morning of the 10th, the boats from both ships were sent to tow into the harbour a Russian galliot from Okotzk. She had been thirty-five days on her passage, and had been seen from the light-house a fortnight ago, beating up toward the mouth of the bay. At that time the crew had sent their only boat on shore for water, of which they now began to be in great want; and the wind freshening, the boat was lost on its return, and the galliot, being driven out to sea again, had suffered exceedingly. There were fifty soldiers in her, with their wives and children, and several other passengers, besides the crew, which consisted of twenty-five, so that they had upward of an hundred souls on board. A great number for a vessel of eighty tons; and that was also heavy laden with stores and provisions. Both this galliot, and the sloop we saw here in May, are built like the Dutch doggers. Soon after she had come to anchor, we received a visit from a _put-parouchick_, or sub-lieutenant, who was a passenger in the galliot, and sent to take the command of this place. Part of the soldiers, we understood, were also designed to reinforce the garrison; and two pieces of small cannon were landed, as an additional defence to the town. It should seem, from these circumstances, that our visit here had drawn the attention of the Russian commanders in Siberia, to the defenceless situation of the place; and I was told by the honest serjeant, with many significant shrugs, that, as we had found our way into it, other nations might do the same, some of whom might not be altogether so welcome.[36]