the name of that narrow division of the old and new world, where the distance between Asia and America is only 13 leagues. They are so named from Captain Vitus Bering, a Dane by birth, and employed on the same plan of discovery in these parts as our great countryman Cook was in the late voyage. He was in the service of Peter the Great: who, by the strength of an extensive genius, conceiving an opinion of the vicinity of America to his Asiatic dominions, laid down a plan of discovery worthy of so extraordinary a monarch, but died before the attempt was begun; but his spirit survived in his successor. Bering, after a tedious and fatiguing journey through the wilds of Siberia, arrived in Kamtchatka, attended with the scanty materials for his voyage, the greatest part of which he was obliged to bring with him through a thousand difficulties. He failed from the river of Kamtschatka on July 15, 1728; and on the 15th of August saw Serdze Kamen, or the heart-shaped rock, a name bestowed on it by the first discoverer.—From Serdze Kamen, to a promontory named by Captain Cook Egff Cape, the land trends south-east. The last is a circular peninsula of high cliffs, projecting far into the sea due east, and joined to the land by a long and very narrow isthmus, in lat. 66. 6. This is the Tschutki Noft of our navigators, and forms the beginning of the narrow straits or division of the old and new world. The distance between Asia and America in this place, as already mentioned, is only 13 leagues. The country about the cape, and to the north-west of it, was inhabited. About mid-channel are two small islands, named by the Russians the isles of St Diomedes; neither of them above three or four leagues in circuit. It is extremely extraordinary that Bering should have failed through this confined passage, and yet that the object of his mission should have escaped him. His misfortune could only be attributed to the foggy weather, which he must have met with in a region notorious for mists; for he says that he saw land neither to the north nor to the east. Our generous commander, determined to give him every honour his merit could claim, has dignified these with the name of Bering's Straits. The depth of these straits is from 12 to 29 or 30 fathoms. The greatest depth is in the middle, which has a flinty bottom; the shallowest parts are near each shore, which consist of sand mixed with bones and shells. The current or tide was very inconsiderable, and what there was came from the west. From East Cape the land trends south by west. In lat. 65. 36. is the bay in which Captain Cook had the interview with the Tschutki. Immediately beyond is the bay of St Laurence, about five leagues broad in the entrance and four deep, bounded at the bottom by high land. A little beyond is a large bay, either bounded by low land at the bottom, or so extensive as to have the end invisible. To the south of this are two other bays; and in N. Lat. 64. 13. Long. 186. 36. is the extreme southern point of the land of the Tschutki. This formerly was called the Anadurksei Noft. Near it Bering had conversation with eight men, who came off to him in a baidar or boat covered with the skins of seals; from which Bering and others have named it the Tschutki Noft.