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[Page 3]
At the head of this great Inlet, we were much entangled & perplexed with drift Ice, and about the latter end of April, experienced heavy falls of Snow, and intense frost, the Mercury in the Thermometer fell so low as the seventh degree of Fahrenheit's scale, and I am sorry to acquaint you, that this severe & quick transition of Climate, killed the greatest part of the live plants, I had I had in the Frame on the Quarter Deck, & this is more to be regreted, as I am affraid it will not be in my power to replace many of them, particularly those from California & the upper regions of Owhyhee, which till this fatal period, were in a flowerishing state; I have now however the Frame near full again, of new plants from this coast, and if we go directly home without much stay in any tropical port, I think I shall be able to carry home many of them.
Here at Prince William's Sound we found some Russian settlements - there are two Companies of them consisting of about two hundred Russians each with several Vessels prosecuting the Fur Trade on this part of the coast with great vigor - they extend their researches & as far as I could understand their claim of the coast as far as Berhings [also spelt Bering] Bay, for in Port Mulgrave we saw a party of them with eight or nine hundred Kodiak Indians in about four hundred & fifty Canoes, killing Sea Otters with great success.