Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
From Okhotsk I desire that you proceed to the Japanese settlements in the lower Kurile Islands, take possession of them and bring all stores and as many of the inhabitants as the vessels will accommodate, to Sitka, where Baranhov will see that they are comfortably established on that large island in the harbor which we shall call Japonsky and converted into good servants of the Company.
According to the view of Professor Milne, the volcanoes of the Kurile chain are fast becoming extinct. Besides the volcanic vents arranged in lines, of which we have treated above, there are a large number, both active and extinct, which appear to be disposed in groups, or sporadically distributed, over various portions of the earth's surface.
Kamschatcka, however, which is their principal settlement in the east of Asia, was not discovered till the year 1690; five years afterwards they reached it by sea from Ochotsk, but for a long time it was thought to be an island. The Kurile Islands were not discovered till the beginning of the eighteenth century.
This phenomenon was to be explained later, when more was known as to the direction taken by the polar current, which, issuing from Behring Strait, washes the shores of Kamtchatka, the Kurile Islands, and Yezo.
Then she rose again to cross the Sea of Okhotsk, running down by the Kurile Isles, which seemed to be a breakwater pierced by hundreds of channels. On the 19th, in the morning, the "Albatross" was over the strait of La Perouse between Saghalien and Northern Japan, and had reached the mouth of the great Siberian river, the Amoor.
His Imperial Majesty, Alexander the First, ordered the Chamberlain and plenipotentiary, the representative of imperial power in the Russo-American possessions, to remove to the Juno for the purpose of visiting the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, Kadiak and the northwestern coast of America."
He found that the inhabitants of Shikotan, who had long been supposed to be a remnant of pre-Ainu immigrants, were brought thither from an island called Shimushir in the Kurile group in 1885 by order of the Japanese Government; that they declared themselves to be descended from men of Saghalien; that they spoke nothing but the Ainu language, and that they inhabited pits in winter, as do also the Ainu now living in Saghalien.
Still, when we come to examine into the cases of recorded eruptions especially those of great violence we find that they are limited to very special districts; and even if we extend our retrospect into the later centuries of our era, we shall find that the exceptionally great eruptions have been confined to certain permanently volcanic regions, such as the chain of the Andes, that of the Aleutian, Kurile, Japanese, and Philippine and Sunda Islands, lying for the most part along the remarkable volcanic girdle of the world to which I have referred in a previous page.
It has sometimes been thought that the red men came to America by way of the Kurile Islands, Kamchatka, and the Aleutian Islands. If this was their route, they avoided a migration of two or three thousand miles through one of the coldest and most inhospitable of regions. This, however, is far from probable. The distance from Kamchatka to the first of the Aleutian Islands is over one hundred miles.
On the 14th and 15th, the wind blowing steadily from the westward, they were obliged to stand to the southward, and were consequently hindered from seeing any more of the Kurile islands. In the situation they then found themselves, they were almost surrounded by the supposed discoveries of former navigators.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking