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Updated: May 10, 2025
This eruption is said to have scattered ashes over the peninsula for three hundred versts to a depth of an inch and a half. The lava has never yet descended much, if any, below the snow line; but I see no reason why it may not at some future time overwhelm the settlement of Kluchei and fill the channel of the Kamchatka River with a fiery flood.
Far away to the north-eastward, over the yellow forest, in soft purple relief against the red sunrise, stood the high sharp peaks of Kluchei, grouped around the central wedge-like cone of the magnificent Kluchefskoi volcano.
Anticipating difficulty in getting horses enough for our use at this small village, the Major had sent eight or ten overland from Kluchei, and we found them there awaiting our arrival. Nearly the whole afternoon was spent in packing the horses and getting ready for a start, and we camped for the night beside a cold mountain spring only a few versts away from the Village.
We floated all day down the river toward Kluchei, getting ever-changing views of the mountains as they were thrown into new and picturesque combinations by our motion to the northward. We reached Kazerefski at dark, and, changing our crew, continued our voyage throughout the night.
Upon entering the "black bath," however, at Kluchei, I saw my mistake, and acknowledged at once the appropriateness of the adjective.
It began in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night, with loud thunderings and tremblings of the earth, which startled the inhabitants of Kluchei from their sleep and brought them in affright to their doors. Far up in the dark winter's sky, 16,000 feet above their heads, blazed a column of lurid flame from the crater, crowned by a great volume of fire-lighted vapour.
The village of Kluchei is situated in an open plain on the right bank of the Kamchatka River, at the very foot of the magnificent Kluchefskoi volcano, and has nothing to distinguish it from other Kamchadal towns, except the boldness and picturesque beauty of its situation.
It does not approach the latter in height, but it seems to draw its fiery supplies from the same source, and is constantly puffing out black vapour, which an east wind drives in great clouds across the white sides of Kluchefskoi until it is sometimes almost hidden from sight. We were entertained at Kluchei in the large comfortable house of the starosta, or local magistrate of the village.
We felt a strong temptation to try to scale its smooth snowy sides and peer over into its smoking crater; but it would have been folly to make the attempt without two or three weeks' training, and we had not the time to spare. The mountain is nearly a perfect cone, and from the village of Kluchei it is so deceitfully foreshortened that the last 3,000 feet appear to be absolutely perpendicular.
At Kluchei we abandoned our rafts, and took Kamchadal log canoes, which could be propelled more easily against the rapid current of the Yolofka River, which we had now to ascend.
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