VII.] MELGOVA. 141 



glad to be able to get them. The so-called brick-tea is, of course, 

 the only kind in use here, as in other parts of Siberia. It is made 

 in cakes about ten inches by five, and three-quarters of an inch in 

 thickness, squeezed flat by hydraulic pressure, and stamped with 

 large Chinese characters ; and were it only of better quality, 

 it would be admirable for rough travel from its portability, and 

 the impossibility of its becoming spoilt by wet. Brick-tea is to 

 a Kamschatkan what coffee is to a Lapp. It is found in the 

 very poorest and most miserable hut, and is regarded as just as 

 much a necessary of life as tobacco. That sugar should also be 

 highly esteemed by the natives is only what might be expected 

 in these latitudes, but its price places it beyond the reach of most. 

 We obtained some at the rate of eighteenpence a pound, but when 

 Dobell visited Kamschatka in 1812 it was sold for as much as five 

 roubles. 



Melcova boasts of a resident pope and a church ; the latter a 

 log- built edifice, which was moved many years ago from Werchni 

 Kamschatka. It is not ornamental, and is painted red on one side 

 only. The pope received us at the porch, and showed us the interior 

 with evident pleasure ; while we, as in duty bound, did our best to 

 assume the necessary air of charmed approval. It must be confessed 

 that it was no easy matter, for the building was completely bare 

 inside, and the walls were covered with English bedroom paper of 

 the commonest kind, set off' by an occasional breadth of another 

 pattern, in which pink roses on a bright blue ground displayed 

 themselves in the full atrocity of the early Victorian epoch. Over 

 the altar were a few oil-paintings of saints, one or two of which 

 were passably good. 



In the same inclosure as the church, but apart from it, as is the 

 usual custom, stands a little square belfry containing seven bells of 

 peculiarly sweet tone. One is inscribed with the date 1761 ; the 

 others are more recent. The church itself, we were told, was so 

 old as to be beyond repair, and another one was in course of 

 erection close by, the logs of which were of very large size. The 



