The Sakhalin leadership had chartered a Shevelev steamer, the Shooter, to carry a load from Korsakovsk Post to Patience Bay where, at the mouth of a large river, Tikhmenev Post was located. Ivan Martynovich, captain of the Shooter at that time, suddenly fell ill and got laid up in bed. I’d already been recommended to him for the journey. To our mutual good luck, I was being transferred to Ivan Martynovich's steamer that evening, and at midnight on 6 August, we raised anchor and headed south, to Cape Crillon. Besides me, the only other sakhalinets was the administrator I— — v, my inseparable traveling companion during my expeditions through the region's seas. By agreement with the assistant captain, mine was the first watch at sea. After passing the lights of Dué Post, we saw nothing else the entire night. South of Aleksandrovsk Post, stretching for hundreds of versts along Sakhalin's west coast, there are very few population points. There exists, owing to coal mines, a little spot on the Sortuna River, and, in another place, there is Mauka Bay, the main depot for seakale. A rocky ridge runs along these shores. Thick ribbons of this aquatic plant get deposited on them. Opposite Mauka is a girdle of rocks, defending the ridge against the stormy sea and through which cuts a passage to the watery expanse. Yet the powerful current cutting through the rocks there poses a danger, and during an infamous wind, our Shooter somehow accidentally ended up there and barely escaped intact.

At first, the weather was overcast, though calm, but on the evening of 7 August, as we approached Crillon, our southernmost cape, we encountered an enormous wave. In clear weather, the mountains of the Japanese island of Matsumae are visible from this cape.

Our steamer righted itself amid the swells and, successfully bypassing Danger Rock, turned into Aniva Bay. Danger Rock— a barren, rocky islet— lies amid the La Pérouse Strait, i.e., where two empires divide and where two seas— the Okhotsk and Japanese— unite. Because an underwater reef extends a long distance from it, in foggy weather it is truly quite dangerous for seafarers. However, it cannot be called barren. An inhuman majority of huge sea lions, seals, and various other pinnipeds, their cries forewarning danger, always covers it.