172 KAMSCHATKA. [chap. 



Kliichefskaya and liis fellows have led me into a longer digres- 

 sion than I had anticipated, and I must return to the poor old 

 doctor who, had we been better acquainted with his language, 

 would doubtless have proved an interesting companion. He told 

 us that we were the first travellers he had ever known to come 

 down the Kamschatka Pdver. We appeared to be a source of 

 almost childish delight to him, and his pleasure was still further 

 increased by discovering a professional brother. He was becoming 

 blind he thought, and asked me to look at his eyes, which showed 

 signs of advancing cataract. Operation would have been inadvis- 

 able at the stage they were in, and I told him that I feared I could 

 do nothing for him. He kissed my hand and raised it to his fore- 

 head, saying that it was of no consequence, and that he loved all 

 doctors, no matter of what nationality. There is a law against 

 selling liquor in the interior of the country, and his eye glistened 

 half with sorrow, half at the aspect of a bottle of Hennessey that 

 stood at hand. We offered him a glass, and it disappeared as if by 

 magic, and as he made his bow and do s^ddania, he absently helped 

 himself to another bumper. He had asked me to go with him to 

 his house, as he had a present for me. On arriving we found his 

 granddaughter, a pretty little child of five or six, playing with a 

 young blue hare which lolloped up in a most confiding way to 

 have its ears scratched. This was the present, but it was evidently 

 such a pet of the little girl that it would have been a crime to 

 have taken it. The old gentleman, however, apparently wished to 

 make some return for a lancet I had given him, and was rather 

 disappointed at my refusal until he suddenly bethought himself of 

 a skull of a Kamschatdale, which he had found laid bare by a 



by ' ' Mount Sivelucli " there is, I think, but little doubt that Kluchefskaya and not 

 Sevelitch is meant. It is evident that Mr. Green did not himself visit the neigh- 

 bourhood of the gi-eat volcanoes, or he would not have described the Kronotsky 

 Peak as the most perfect cone in the world. The height of this mountain, which 

 lies immediately to the east of the lake of the same name, is given by Findlay as 

 10,610 feet, while that of Fujiyama has been variously estimated at from 12,234 to 

 12,365 feet. 



