VI.] 



PUSCHINA. 



119 



number killed hj the party was close on one hundred and twenty 

 skins. The Kronotsky Lake, which has never yet been visited by 

 Europeans, lies south of the great group of volcanoes at the mouth 

 of the Kamschatka Pdver, and some sixty miles east of Melcova.^ 

 It is now completely deserted by the natives, but, as far as we 



^N 



could gather from our hunters, it has remains of ancient lake- 

 dwellings on its shores, with deposits of shells and other objects of 

 like nature resembling the kjohhen-moddings of ISTorthern Europe 

 which, as far as I am aware, are unknown in the country at the 

 present day. 



Of the number of sables killed annually in Kamschatka it is 



1 Both Melcova and the lake are wrongly placed on the Admiralty chart ; the 

 former is nearly ninety miles north of its assigned position ! 



