EFFECT OF THE CRIMEAN WAR 19 



of the Acting Commissioner. The school was closed 

 while still in an embryonic state, and both men were 

 recalled. At the end of the forties, when the govern- 

 ment of Eastern Siberia fell into the hands of 

 Count iMuravieff, Kamchatka had reached its com- 

 parative apogee. It became a separate administrative 

 district, with a military governor at its head, under 

 the supervision of the Governor-General of Eastern 

 Siberia ; Okhotsk was incorporated with the govern- 

 ment of Yakoutsk. The first appointed military 

 governor of the peninsula in 1850 was Captain, later 

 Admiral, Zavoiko. If the programme of this well- 

 meaning gentleman had been duly carried out, his 

 proposed measures towards the civilisation of the 

 country realised, schools founded, ships constructed, 

 buildings erected, colonists introduced, Kamchatka 

 might perhaps have obtained a well-deserved pros- 

 perity ; but a spell seemed to lie on that unhappy 

 country. The lengthy correspondence between Cap- 

 tain Zavoiko and Count Muravieff shows that the 

 district was on the brink of a reform era when an un- 

 expected turn of events altered the plans of the Govern- 

 ment. Admiral Nevelskoy discovered the mouths of 

 the Amur River and the possibility of navigation on 

 that great East-Asiatic artery. Thereafter Kamchatka 

 fell into complete oblivion, and has remained so ever 



