[Sidenote: Voyage of Solovioff in the St. Peter and Paul, 1764.] In the year 1764, Jacob Ulednikoff, merchant of Irkutsk and company, fitted out a ship called the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, under the command of Ivan Solovioff: she sailed from the mouth of Kamtchatka river the 25th of August. The crew consisted of fifty-five men, amongst whom were some of the owners, and thirteen Kamtchadals.
They steered at first S. E. with the wind at N. W. but on its coming southerly they afterwards shaped their course E. N. E. The 27th one of the Russian sailors died off Kamtchatka point; the 31st they made Beering's Island, which they passed leaving it on their left. The 1st and 2nd of September they were becalmed, and afterwards the wind springing up at W. S. W. they continued their former course; until the 5th they sailed on with the wind at south; but on the 5th and 6th, from changeable breezes and dead calms, made no progress; from the 7th to the 13th, they sailed E. S. E. with Southerly and Westerly winds; and from that time to the fifteenth East, with the wind at West.
September 16, they made the island Umnak, where Solovioff had formerly been in Nikiphoroff's vessel. As they sailed along the Northern coast, three islanders came to them in baidars; but, the crew having no interpreter, they would not come on board. As they found no good bay on that shore, they proceeded through a strait of about a verst broad, which separates Umnak from Unalashka. [Sidenote: Arrival at Unalashka.] They lay-to during the night; and early on the 17th dropped anchor at the distance of about two hundred yards from the shore, in a bay on the North side of the last mentioned island.
From thence the captain dispatched Gregory Korenoff at the head of twenty men in a baidar, with orders to land, reconnoitre the country, find out the nearest habitations, and report the disposition of the people. Korenoff returned the same day, with an account that he had discovered one of the dwelling-caves of the savages, but abandoned and demolished, in which he had found traces of Russians, viz. a written legend, and a broken musket-stock. In consequence of this intelligence, they brought the ship near the coast, and endeavoured to get into the mouth of a river called by the natives Tsikanok, and by the Russians Osernia, but were prevented by shallow water. They landed however their tackle and lading. No natives made their appearance until the 22d, when two of them came of their own accord, and welcomed the Russians on their arrival. They told their names, and were recognized by Solovioff; he had known them on a former expedition, when Agiak, one of the two, had served as an interpreter; the other, whose name was Kashmak, had voluntarily continued some time with the crew on the same occasion.