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In less than an hour after their departure from Petropaulouski, our hunters had entered amid the wildest scenery where not the slightest sign of either cultivation or human habitation was to be seen, and where at any moment they might expect to come in sight of their great game. The guide was conducting them to a stream that ran into the bay some ten or twelve miles from the "ostrog."
Dog-sledges were brought out upon the ice by the inhabitants; and upon these our travellers were carried to the town, or "ostrog" as it is called such being the name given to the villages of Kamschatka. In Petropaulouski, many curious objects and customs came under the observation of our travellers.
Five more of them were killed upon the spot; and several others that took to flight were tracked through the snow, and destroyed in their hiding-places. For a week after, there was very little fish eaten in the ostrog of Petropaulouski which for a long period previous to that time had not witnessed such a carnival.
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.
The vessel which carried our adventurers arrived at Petropaulouski late in the spring; but, as the winter had been unusually prolonged, the bay was still blocked up with ice, and the ship could not get up to the little town. This did not hinder them from landing.
It would never do to let such an opportunity pass. They might not meet with so good a chance again; or, at all events, they might be delayed a good long time before another would turn up; and a residence in Petropaulouski, even in the "isba" of the governor who was himself only a sergeant of Cossacks, and his dwelling a mere hut was not so pleasant as that they should wish to prolong it.
It was just in such a spring that our young hunters had arrived at Petropaulouski; and stories of numerous bear conflicts, that had recently occurred in the neighbourhood, were rife in the village; while the number of fresh skies every day brought in by the Kurilski hunters, showed that bears could not be otherwise than plentiful in the country adjacent.
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