CLIMATE AND EARTHQUAKES 207 



us constantly to pursue [animals for] our food at their base. It 

 is well known that in Kamchatka many men are lost every year 

 through such accidents while hunting sable and wild sheep.^^^ 



From the middle of the month of May to the middle of June 

 we mostly had gloomy weather and rain; the best weather 

 occurred from then to the middle of July. Although during this 

 time considerable heat prevails, the evenings and the nights 

 are so cool that one can stand warm furs. During the whole 

 period of our sojourn on this island we never heard thunder. 

 Aurora borealis I also did not observe. 



The greatest changes on this island probably occur as a result 

 of earthquakes and high floods. Clear evidence of the great 

 floods is aff"orded by driftwood, whalebones, and w^hole sea cow 

 skeletons which have been swept far inland and into the moun- 

 tains. From the age of the wood I was able to conclude quite 

 certainly that, at the time of the flood that struck the Kamchat- 

 kan shore and the Kurile Islands in 1738, the water rose to a 

 height of 30 fathoms at Bering Island also, a circumstance to 

 which bear witness whole trees which I came across in the 

 mountains at that elevation and also the sand hills and new 

 hillocks that had been deposited near the beach and among 

 which large trees still stand erect without having decayed.* With 

 regard to these hills that had been built up by the floods it 

 seemed to me remarkable that they coincided completely in 

 form, position, number of summits, and valleys with the high 

 mountains at the foot of which they had only recently been 

 formed; hence the dissection and origin of the higher mountains 

 may in all probability likewise be attributed to the force of the 

 waves.^° 



69a Instead of "wild sheep" the MS has "mosimont," i.e. Ovis 

 musimon, the mouflon. The Kamchatkan species, however, is Ovis 

 nivicola. (S) 



* As the result of similar but much greater floods is to be explained 

 [the presence of] a large amount of petrified wood in the sandstone strata, 

 deposited as silt, on the western side of the Ural Mountains and else- 

 where. — P. 



70 The MS has in addition: "and the origin of the larger may be 



