An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia…. Performed By command of Her Imperial Majesty Catherine the Second, Empress of All the Russias, by Commodore Joseph Billings, In the Years 1785,&c. to 1794.

p. 1: …the Admiralty confirmed the officers chosen by the commander, and supplied astronomical and nautical instruments, the charts and journals of all former navigators from the year 1724, and every other article considered as necessary.

p. 14: Irkutsk contains 2500 houses, chiefly of wood, 12 stone churches, a cathedral, and two monasteries; beside which, there are…a seminary for the study of divinity, a public school, a library and collection of curiosities; also a theatre, of which the performers are all young men and women native of Irkutsk.

p. 32, Appendix. No. V. Instructions of Her Imperil Majesty, from the Admiralty Collage, to Mr. Joseph Billings… Article I: For your information are hereunto annexed fourteen charts of former navigators on the Northern and Eastern Ocean, and along the coasts; as also of travels by land; to which are annexed short extracts of the journals of the travelers, from 1724 to 1799.

p. 271: During the winter, I had frequent opportunities of reading my vocabulary (taken in 1790 in the island Sithanak) to the natives, who understood every word; and, therefore, I think I may venture to pronounce it pretty correct: on all the Aleutan [ sic ] islands the th is pronounced exactly as in England.