KAMSGHATKA. [chap. 



There are no roads even in the little settlement itself, and, 

 from the irregular distribution of the houses, and the equally 

 irregular ground on which they are built, the traveller has to 

 pick his way from one to another as best he can. It is needless 

 to state that wheeled vehicles are, in consequence, unknown. The 

 church, an uninteresting-looking building, painted white, is practi- 

 cally the only public edifice.-^ Near it, and at the bottom of Mr. 

 Lugobil's garden, stands the little monument erected to the memory 

 of Bering. It is an iron column of no great size or taste, which 

 was sent hither years ago from St. Petersburg, and, half buried in 

 the lush grass which at this season of the year grows so freely in 

 Kamschatka, it looked melancholy enough. It is a cenotaph, for 

 the bones of the celebrated navigator rest far away upon the island 

 that bears his name. A monument to Captain Gierke, the successor 

 of Captain Cook, is, I believe not far from it, but we did not see it. 

 The town is, indeed, somewhat rich in these objects of melancholy 

 interest, for in a gap in the western promontory, once the site of 

 an old battery, the dilapidated remains of a memorial column to 

 De la Perouse is still to be seen ; while on the sand-spit at the 

 entrance of the harbour, an erection less pleasing to the eye of an 

 Englishman is conspicuous, commemorating the success of the 

 Eussians against the forces of the Allied Fleet in 1854. 



I must confess that, previous to our visit to Kamschatka, I had 

 been in entire ignorance of the aifair that resulted in such disaster 

 to our forces. But little known or commented on at the time, it 

 has probably long ago passed out of the memory of most of those 

 of the past generation ; while, owing to the success with which the 

 matter was hushed up, it had but little chance of becoming known 

 to the present. In the action of the 24tli August, 1854, we 

 suffered a defeat as humiliating as it was ridiculous, and one for 

 which, from the circumstance of our attack having been made on a 



^ At the time of Lessep's visit, in 1787, there was no church in the settlement, 

 but he alludes to the former existence of one, and mentions that its situation was 

 known "by means of a sort of tomb which formed a part of it." 



