Before this it was not known here that tar could be obtained from the native trees. So also for the sea voyage, the deficiency of spirit made from grain was supplied by a liquor distilled from herbs, and salt was made by boiling sea water. To increase our store of sea provisions, in place of cow's butter, fat was tried out from fish, in place of meat fish was salted. The vessel was provisioned with everything needful for forty men for a year. On the 14th day of July we went out of the mouth of the Kamchatka river into the sea, in obedience to the autographic orders given me by his Imperial Majesty Peter the Great, as the map constructed for that purpose will show. August 8th, having arrived in north latitude 64° 30', eight men rowed to us from the shore in a skin-boat, enquiring from whence we came and what was our business there. They said they were Chukchi, (whom the Russians of these parts have long known) and as we lay to they were urged to come to the vessel. They inflated some floats made of sealskin and sent one man swimming to us to talk, then the boat came up to the vessel and they told us that on the coast lived many of their nation; that the land not far from there takes a decided turn to the westward, and they also said that at no great distance from where we were, we should see an island. This proved true, but we saw nothing valuable upon it except huts. This island in honor of the day we named St. Lawrence, but we were not able to see any people upon it, though an officer was sent in a boat from the vessel on two occasions to look for inhabitants. On the 15th of August we arrived in the latitude of 67° 18' and I judged that we had clearly and fully carried out the instructions given by his Imperial Majesty of glorious and ever deserving memory, because the land no longer extended to the north. Neither from the Chukchi coast nor to the eastward could any extension of the land be observed. If we should continue on our course and happen to have contrary winds we could not get back to Kamchatka before the close of navigation and might be obliged to winter in that region, not only without a harbor, but where no fuel could anywhere be obtained, where the native people do not acknowledge the authority of the Russian government, but are wholly independent and united against us in refusing to pay tribute. From the mouth of the Kamchatka river and all the way to this place along the seacoast wind elevated mountains, resembling a wall in steepness, and from which the snow does not disappear in summer.