ON THE WAY HOME 297 



Pekin after the siege. He told me that one of the 

 missionary ladies. Dr. Lillie E. D. Saville, of the 

 London Mission, then on the train, had proved herself 

 to be a very brave lady. He had come in contact with 

 her during the siege of Pekin. She had attended to 

 the wounded and dying soldiers amidst all the turmoil 

 of battle, and had been highly admired and esteemed 

 by both the officers and the men of the Russian 

 and English armies. The soldiers particularly 

 thought her an exceptionally fine character. 



We afterwards drifted to the topic of the Altai 

 Mountains, which he was eager to hear about, and 

 he told me that there was good climbing in the 

 Kamchatka Peninsula. The highest mountains were 

 Klutchevis (Sopkyar), a volcano 22,000 feet high, 

 and Korertskyar, 16,000 feet high, which had never 

 been climbed. A German doctor had climbed 12,000 

 feet of it. The best way to get there was by rail 

 to Vladivostock, and thence to Petropavlovsk for 

 Klutchevis, forty miles away, or for Korertskyar from 

 Petropavlovsk to Negi Kulchka by steamer, the 

 mountains being twenty miles farther. There is 

 plenty of hunting ; sables, red, white, blue, and silver 

 fox, bears, squirrels, sea otter, seals, ermine, wolves, 

 and white hares abounding. The average yield of 

 skins per annum is about 7,000, but when there is 

 little snow in the winter it is difficult for the natives 

 to travel iand the quantities decrease to about one 

 half. The best time for shooting is August or 

 September, at other times fogs abound and it is very 

 cold at night. The hunter waits by the rivers, which 

 are full of fish, chiefly a variety of salmon. The 

 bear comes down to the river to feed on the fish, 

 and is easily shot, if he does not get scent of the 

 hunters . 



The Baron informed me that he had shot nine 

 bears in fifteen days, which averaged 9J feet standing 



