north, is comparatively mild and equable, and the vegetation has an almost tropical freshness and luxuriance totally at variance with all one’s ideas of Kamchatka.  The population of the peninsula I estimate from careful observation at about 5000, and it is made up of three distinct classes—­the Russians, the Kamchadals or settled natives, and the Wandering Koraks.  The Kamchadals, who compose the most numerous class, are settled in little log villages throughout the peninsula, near the mouths of small rivers which rise in the central range of mountains and fall into the Okhotsk Sea or the Pacific.  Their principal occupations are fishing, fur-trapping, and the cultivation of rye, turnips, cabbages, and potatoes, which grow thriftily as far north as lat. 58 deg..  Their largest settlements are in the fertile valley of the Kamchatka River, between Petropavlovsk and Kluchei (kloo-chay’).  The Russians, who are comparatively few in number, are scattered here and there among the Kamchadal villages, and are generally engaged in trading for furs with the Kamchadals and the nomadic tribes to the northward.  The Wandering Koraks, who are the wildest, most powerful, and most independent natives in the peninsula, seldom come south of the 58th parallel of latitude, except for the purpose of trade.  Their chosen haunts are the great desolate steppes lying east of Penzhinsk (pen’-zhinsk) Gulf, where they wander constantly from place to place in solitary bands, living in large fur tents and depending for subsistence upon their vast herds of tamed and domesticated reindeer.  The government under which all the inhabitants of Kamchatka nominally live is administered by a Russian officer called an “ispravnik” (is-prav’-nik) or local governor [Footnote:  Strictly, a chief of district police.] who is supposed to settle all questions of law which may arise between individuals or tribes, and to collect the annual “yassak” or tax of furs, which is levied upon every male inhabitant in his province.  He resides in Petropavlovsk, and owing to the extent of country over which he has jurisdiction, and the imperfect facilities which it affords for getting about, he is seldom seen outside of the village where he has his headquarters.  The only means of transportation between the widely separated settlements of the Kamchadals are packhorses, canoes, and dog-sledges, and there is not such a thing as a road in the whole peninsula.  I may have occasion hereafter to speak of “roads,” but I mean by the word nothing more than the geometrician means by a “line”—­simple longitudinal extension without any of the sensible qualities which are popularly associated with it.

[Illustration:  A TENT OF THE WANDERING KORAKS IN SUMMER]

Through this wild, sparsely populated region, we purposed to travel by hiring the natives along our route to carry us with their horses from one settlement to another until we should reach the territory of the Wandering Koraks.  North of that point we could not depend upon any regular means of transportation, but would be obliged to trust to luck and the tender mercies of the arctic nomads.