Three Accounts of the Vasil'ev-Shismarev Expedition of 1819-1822

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found a single person in the indicated settlement. Paigdau remained with us during all the rest of our stay in St. Lawrence Bay, which the Chukchi call "kugom-puniani," and left on an arriving baidar when we were under sail.

This chief told us that he annually goes to the fair at Ostrovnoe [the Anyui market] and that this year he saw there many Russian toions who came from Nizhne Kolymsk. Upon our inquiries about the position of the Asiatic shore, he declared that we would not get far to the north, and when we told him that we intended to get through to Nizhne Kolymsk, he laughed, saying, "Much ice, mountains of ice, you will not be able to get through."

When we got under the sail on the 13th, a chief by the name of Leicheigu came to us in the company of 24 Chukchi men in two baidars. He assured us that he came especially for us from Metchiglinskaia Bay [sic] [Mechigmenan] where his settlement is, and that he was the son of the chief, Imlerat, who accompanied Captain Billings in his journey to the land of the Chukchi. Hoping, finally, to get the desired deer from him, the captain put to him this request, but according to his assertion, he needed seven days to deliver as many deer as we wanted. The captain, in absence of an emergency, did not dare to waste so much precious time, and we therefore told Leiteigu that he should go, and that we, in a month or a month and a half, would come to Metchiglinskaia Bay, where we would visit him and buy deer. Receiving some presents, he left and promised to pre-