234 A SHOOTING TRIP TO KAMCHATKA 



could be had in the middle of the street, and the 

 absence of doctors greatly facilitated the treatment. 



Weather forbidding further advance, I put up for the 

 night at Nikolai's villa, where the drawing-room could 

 boast of a spring sofa and an old stained piano. 

 Numerous unframed photographs were nailed to the 

 walls ; amongst them was one representing a British 

 naval officer, and was signed " E. R. Benson, r.n." My 

 host told me that he had received it as a souvenir of a 

 memorable bear hunt in the neighbourhood. Nikolai's 

 son was engaged to accompany us on the following 

 day to the head of the valley of the Bystraia, an 

 affluent of the Paratunka, not to be confounded with 

 the river of the same name, on which lies Ganal ; the 

 meaning" of the word beini^ " swift " in Russian, and 

 most of the streams in Kamchatka flowing with a 

 fast current, that epithet is common to many a river 

 ot the peninsula. Round the settlement I was struck 

 by the sight of attempts at cultivation on a much 

 larger scale : almost every hut owned a vegetable 

 garden, and Nikolai's enclosure was quite a model one 

 in this respect, yielding potato, cabbage, and carrots — ■ 

 a pleasant contrast with the uncultivated surround- 

 ings of the villages in the interior. This was, of 

 course, due to the hot springs and to the constant 

 higher temperature both in winter and summer, as 



