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Salmon form the principal food of the Kamchadales and their dogs. The fishing season in Avatcha Bay lasts about six weeks, and at its close the salmon leave the bay and ascend the streams, where they are caught by the interior natives. In the bay they are taken in seines dragged along the shore, and the number of fish caught annually is almost beyond computation.
I could not learn that any skilled botanist had ever visited Kamchatka and classified its flora. Among the arboreal productions the alder and birch were the most numerous. Pine, larch, and spruce grow on the Kamchatka river, and the timber from them is brought to Avatcha from the mouth of that stream. The commercial value of Kamchatka is entirely in its fur trade.
It requires very good eyesight to discover the entrance of Avatcha Bay at a distance of eight or ten miles, but the landmarks are of such excellent character that one can approach without hesitation. The passage is more than a mile wide. Guarding it on the right is a hill nearly three hundred feet high, and standing almost perpendicular above the water.
"We killed many of them," Steller adds, "with our hatchets and knives. They annoyed us greatly, and we were unable to keep them from entering our shelters and stealing our clothing and food." The survivors built a small vessel from the wreck, and succeeded in reaching Avatcha in the following summer.
Captain King witnessed an eruption of Avatcha in 1779, and says that stones fell at Petropavlovsk, twenty-five miles away, and the ashes covered the deck of his ship. Mr. Pierce, an old resident of Kamchatka, gave me a graphic description of an eruption in 1861. It was preceded by an earthquake, which overturned crockery on the tables, and demolished several ovens.
One old man who had been forty years a colonist was living at Avatcha in 1866. He was at liberty to return to Europe, but preferred remaining. In 1771 occurred the first voyage from Kamchatka to a foreign port, and curiously enough, it was performed under the Polish flag. A number of exiles, headed by a Pole named Benyowski, seized a small vessel and put to sea.
The compass, the chronometer, the quadrant; what would be the watery world without them! On the twenty-fourth of July we were just a month at sea. In all that time we had spoken no ship nor had any glimpse of land, unless I except a trifle in a flower pot. The captain made his reckoning at noon, and added to the reading "Seventy-five miles from the entrance of Avatcha Bay.
Even most of the furs collected by the Hudson's Bay Company find their way into Russia: for the consumption of these goods in Great Britain is extremely limited, compared with that of many other articles de luxe. In the fur ship our travellers proceeded from Sitka to the port of Petropaulouski, which is situated on Avatcha bay, near the southern end of the peninsula.
As Avatcha bay is nearly land-locked, it forms one of the most sheltered harbours on that side of the Pacific; but unfortunately during winter the bay freezes over; and then ships can neither get into nor out of it.
As one leaves the Pacific and enters Avatcha Bay he passes high rocks and cliffs, washed at their base by the waves. The loud-sounding ocean working steadily against the solid walls, has worn caverns and dark passages, haunted by thousands of screaming and fluttering sea-birds.
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