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You seem to understand in a moment that you are taken into the family, and are moving in its inner circles, and not revolving at a distance in some outer court of the gentiles. "How many people do we call on from year to year and know no more of their feelings, habits, tastes, family ideas and ways, than if they lived in Kamtschatka! And why?
A force was sent out from Yakutz, on the Lena, in 1643, which reached the Amur, and thus Russians came for the first time in contact with the Chinese, and a new method of reaching Cathay was thus obtained, while geography gained the knowledge of the extent of Northern Asia. It was not, however, till fifty years afterwards, in 1696, that the Russians reached Kamtschatka.
As soon as the passage was made, the greatest part of the water was emptied into the well: but the leak was now so much increased, that it was necessary to keep one half of the people constantly pumping and baling, till the noon of the 15th. On the 23rd, at six in the morning, on the fog clearing away, the land of Kamtschatka appeared, in mountains covered with snow.
Lesseps made a careful examination of Kamtschatka himself, and succeeded in passing overland thence to Paris, being the first European to journey completely across the Old World from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.
A calm of several days, between eighteen and twenty degrees of north latitude, during our passage to Kamtschatka, afforded opportunities for the observation of several remarkable animals. A small animal of Lamarck's family of Heteropodes, with two rows of separate fins, received the name Tomopteris.
At the age of sixteen, he was knowted, had his nose slit, and was banished, first to Siberia, end afterward to Kamtschatka, where he had lived thirty-one years. He bore in his whole figure the strongest marks of old age, though he had scarcely reached his fifty-fourth year.
Even here the tradition of a universal deluge prevails, and a spot is still shown, on the top of a mountain where Kutka landed from a boat, in order to replenish the world with men. The proverbial phrase current in Kamtschatka, to express a period long past, is, "that was in Kutka's days."
The swallows brought us no good fortune. The very day after we left Kamtschatka, one of our best sailors fell from the mast-head into the scuttle, and immediately expired. He had climbed thither in safety in the most violent storms, and executed the most difficult tasks with ease; now, in fine weather, on a tranquil sea, he met this fate.
This evidence is conclusive in itself, and is further confirmed by the geological record, from which we know that the land connection between Alaska and Kamtschatka was of Pliocene age, while we have no knowledge of the wapiti in America until the succeeding period.
The forests of Kamtschatka are not enlivened by singing-birds; indeed land-birds are all scarce; but there are infinite numbers of waterfowl of many species. Immense flocks of them are to be seen upon the lakes, rivers, morasses, and even the sea itself, in the vicinity of the shore. Fish is abundant, especially in the months of June and July.
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