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It was sufficient pleasure, however, at first, to lie back in the tent upon our soft bearskins, watching the brilliantly coloured and ever varying foliage of the banks, to sweep swiftly but silently around abrupt bends into long vistas of still water, startling the great Kamchatkan eagle from his lonely perch on some jutting rock, and frightening up clouds of clamorous waterfowl, which flew in long lines down the river until out of sight.
He demanded promotion or discharge, and withdrew to Finland, where the Czar's Kamchatkan expedition called him from retirement. The expedition left St. Petersburg February 5th. The midshipman of this voyage was Peter Chaplin, whose journal was deposited in the Naval College of the Admiralty, St. Petersburg. Berg gives a summary of this journal.
Among the primitive men who were pushed outward from the Asian deserts during a period of aridity, one group migrated northeastward toward the Kamchatkan corner of Asia. Whether they reached Bering Sea and the Kamchatkan shore before the next epoch of glaciation we do not know.
He was too much interested in the yellow glitter of real gold to think of danger. And he was half dazed by the realization that there could be a gold mine like this in Siberia. Alaska had gold, plenty of it, of course, and he was now less than two hundred miles from Alaska, but he had never dreamed that the dreary slopes of the Kamchatkan Peninsula could harbor such wealth.
Viushin took especial pains with the preparation of my supper, and did the best he could, poor fellow, to enliven the solitary meal with stories and funny reminiscences of Kamchatkan travel; but the venison cutlets had lost somehow their usual savour, and the Russian jokes and stories I could not understand.
I had often heard Dodd speak of the "black baths" of the Kamchadals; and without knowing definitely what he meant, I had a sort of vague impression that these "black baths" were taken in some inky fluid of Kamchatkan manufacture, which possessed peculiar detersive properties. I could think of no other reason than this for calling a bath "black."
Owing to the lateness of the hour, we were compelled to postpone indefinitely our visit to the church; but we had been sufficiently amused for one day, and returned to the house satisfied, if not delighted, with our experience of Kamchatkan black baths.
Yolofka, a small Kamchadal settlement of half a dozen houses, is situated among the foot-hills of the great central Kamchatkan range, immediately below the pass which bears its name, and on the direct route to Tigil and the west coast. It is the head of canoe navigation on the Yolofka River, and the starting-point for parties intending to cross the mountains.
The Major, unaccustomed as he was to these vicissitudes of Kamchatkan travel, held out like a Spartan; but I noticed that for the last ten miles he rode upon a pillow, and shouted at short intervals to Dodd, who, with stoical imperturbability, was riding quietly in advance: "Dodd! oh, Dodd! haven't we got most to that con-found-ed Malqua yet?"
It is not fairly a representative Kamchatkan village, for it has felt in no inconsiderable degree the civilising influences of foreign intercourse, and shows in its manners and modes of life and thought some evidences of modern enterprise and enlightenment.
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