That extreme narrowing of the American shore of Bering Straits: the Asiatic coast is only thirty-six miles to the Westward from this Point, which was located and named by Captain Cook, August 7, 1778
Cape Prince of Wales, which forms the extreme narrowing of Bering Straits, is a high, rugged promontory, with walls on the south side that are abrupt precipices of a full thousand feet, while the uplands rise, culminating in a snowy crown that is twenty-five hundred feet above the level of the sea. Deep gulches seam these vertical walls, and are the paths of numerous tiny rivulets that trickle and run in cascades down from the spongy moorlands above. When, however, you stand in to the straits, homeward bound from the Arctic Ocean, this cape on that side presents a wholly different outline. It slopes up gradually from the beaches, and presents the appearance of a tundra gently rising to a small ridge-like summit. This lowland on the north side is projected under the sea for a distance of over eight miles in a northerly direction, making an exceedingly dangerous shoal, and justly dreaded by the mariner.
The Siberian side and opposite headland is the bold and lofty East Cape, and is connected with the mainland by a low neck of rolling tundra, which is characteristic of Cape Prince of Wales also. Both of these outposts of two mighty continents present, at a small distance, the resemblance of islands.
On June 20th, two hundred and thirty-eight years ago (1648), Simeon Deschnev, a Cossack chief trader, sailed from the mouth of the Siberian river Kolyma, standing to the eastward, where he intended to cruise until the country of those Chookchie natives, who had ivory for trade, should be reached. His party sailed in three small “kotches,” which were rude wooden shallops, decked over, about thirty feet long and twelve in beam, drawing but little water. They pushed on and on in that region to the eastward, from which direction the nomadic natives of the Kolyma had always returned laden with walrus-ivory. Fields of ice retarded them; no populous trading-villages rewarded their scrutiny of the rugged coast as they advanced. The known waters behind them closed up with floes, so returning was impossible; while the unknown waters ahead were open and invited exploration. In this manner, hugging the coast, Deschnev and his companions sailed through the straits, landing once there in September. He called it an “isthmus,” and described the appearance of the Diomede Islands, which he plainly saw from the shore. Although no mention is made by any one of this party of having seen the American continent, yet it must have been observed by them, for the bold headland of Cape Prince of Wales can be easily descried on any clear day from the Asiatic side. Deschnev’s voyage had been quite forgotten until Müller, in hunting over old records in 1764, found the narrative then, and at once published it in the “Morskoi Sbornik.”
A long interregnum elapsed between the hardy voyage of Simeon Deschnev and the next or second passage of the straits by the keel of a white man’s vessel. Not until August, 1728, did Bering sail through here. He went only a short distance above, into the Arctic Ocean, and returned without giving any sign thereafter of the importance of the pass or its nature, believing, most likely, that what land he saw on the eastern side was a mere island and not a great American continent. But that intrepid navigator, Captain Cook, who comes third in this early initiation of our race, made no mistake: he fully realized that the division of two hemispheres was here effected, and so declared the fact, and then gave to these straits, in a most chivalric manner, the name of Bering, August, 1778.
The Diomedes.
“Fairway Rock.” “Ignalook” (America). “Noornabook” (Asia).
[Viewed from the Arctic Ocean; looking S.S.W. 7 m.]
Midway, stepping-stones as it were, across those straits are the Diomedes, two barren, rocky islets and a sheer rock. The largest and the most western is about three miles long and one in width; it is seven or eight hundred feet in abrupt elevation from the water, and the line of division between the Siberian possessions and our own just takes it in. The sister island is somewhat smaller, less than half as large, but it is as bold and sheer in its rocky elevation, leaving a channel-width of two miles only in between. The first is named Ratmanov, or Noornabook; the second, Kroozenstern, or Ignalook; while that high isolated hay-cock mass, about seven miles south of Kroozenstern, is called Fairway Rock. Bering Straits has an average depth of only twenty-six fathoms, with a hard, regular bottom of sand, gravel, and silt.