72 KAMSGHATKA. [chap. 



onlooker it would seem as if we were deliberately beaching the 

 vessel. "Starboard! hard a-starboard !" comes the order. " 'Ard 

 a-starboard," echoes the man at the wheel. " Hard a-port !" " 'Ard 

 a-port it is," he sings out, clawing the wheel towards him with foot 

 and hand. " Well ! I'm blessed if ever I see the likes of this 'ere 

 place," I hear Jack mutter as we are safely berthed, and, on the 

 whole, I am very much inclined to agree with hun. 



Our arrival created no little excitement among the inhabitants 

 of this remote little spot : it might possibly have created even 

 more had we not entered the harbour almost at the moment of de- 

 parture of the yearly fur steamer for Japan rid Okhotsk. All 

 Petropaulovsky had assembled to wave their adieux, and not a few 

 of them appeared torn by the conflicting desires of seeing the last 

 of their friends and of discovering the luisiness of the new-comers. 

 The steamer was hardly under way before we were receiving our 

 Aisitors. They were but limited in number. Petropaulovsky, in 

 spite of the imposing letters to which it is treated in the maps, is, 

 after all, little more than a hamlet, and is probably stationary, if 

 not actually decreasing, with regard to population. Gierke, in 

 1779, found the settlement consisting of thirty huts built upon the 

 sand-spit to which I have already alluded, and consisting mostly 

 of yourts or balagans.^ Captain Cochrane, who in 1821 performed 

 the unprecedented feat of walking across Siberia from Eussia to 

 Ivamschatka, describes it as having increased to fifty-seven buildings, 

 some of which were on the mainland ; and at the period of the 

 Crimean war it appears to have been as large as it is at the present 

 time, if not actually larger. The town had been transferred to the 

 head of the little harbour, where it now stands, and boasted of no 

 less than two hundred edifices of all kinds. But in Kamschatka, as 

 in other northern countries, winter storehouses, fish-drying sheds, 

 and other out-buildings are so numerous, that the actual dwelling- 



^ A j'ourt is a semi-subterranean winter dwelling, roofed with turf. The balagans 

 are only used in summer : they are rough wooden buildings erected on piles. The 

 upper part serves as the dwelling-house, while, beneath, the salmon are hung up in 

 rows to dry. 



