On the 5th, the parties that were on shore returned on board, and were employed in scrubbing the ship’s bottom, and getting in eight tons of shingle ballast. We also got up two of our guns, that had been stowed in the fore-hold, and mounted them on the deck, being now about to visit nations, our receptions amongst whom might a good deal depend on the respectability of our appearance. The Resolution hauled on shore on the 8th, to repair some damages, which she had also received among the ice, in her cutwater; and our carpenters, in their turn, were sent to her assistance. 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 preventives 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 anti-scorbutic 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.