the Kamchadals, and to the wild stories of perilous mountain adventure which they delighted to relate.  I learned during these Kamchatkan Nights’ Entertainments many interesting particulars of Kamchadal life, customs, and peculiarities of which I had before known nothing; and, as I shall have no occasion hereafter to speak of this curious little-known people, I may as well give here what account I can of their language, music, amusements, superstitions, and mode of life.

The people themselves I have already described as a quiet, inoffensive, hospitable tribe of semi-barbarians, remarkable only for honesty, general amiability, and comical reverence for legally constituted authority.  Such an idea as rebellion or resistance to oppression is wholly foreign to the Kamchadal character now, whatever it may have been in previous ages of independence.  They will suffer and endure any amount of abuse and ill-treatment, without any apparent desire for revenge, and with the greatest good-nature and elasticity of spirit.  They are as faithful and forgiving as a dog.  If you treat them well, your slightest wish will be their law; and they will do their best in their rude way to show their appreciation of kindness, by anticipating and meeting even your unexpressed wants.  During our stay at Lesnoi the Major chanced one day to inquire for some milk.  The starosta did not tell him that there was not a cow in the village, but said that he would try to get some.  A man was instantly despatched on horseback to the neighbouring settlement of Kinkil, and before night he returned with a champagne-bottle under his arm, and the Major had milk that evening in his tea.  From this time until we started for Gizhiga—­more than a month—­a man rode twenty miles every day to bring us a bottle of fresh milk.  This seemed to be done out of pure kindness of heart, without any desire or expectation of future reward; and it is a fair example of the manner in which we were generally treated by all the Kamchadals in the peninsula.

The settled natives of northern Kamchatka have generally two different residences, in which they live at different seasons of the year.  These are respectively called the “zimovie” or winter settlement, and the “letovie” (let’-o-vye) or summer fishing-station, and are from one to five miles apart.  In the former, which is generally situated under the shelter of timbered hills, several miles from the seacoast, they reside from September until June.  The letovie is always built near the mouth of an adjacent river or stream, and consists of a few yurts or earth-covered huts, eight or ten conical balagans mounted on stilts, and a great number of wooden frames on which fish are hung to dry.  To this fishing-station the inhabitants all remove early in June, leaving their winter settlement entirely deserted.  Even the dogs and the crows abandon it for the more attractive surroundings and richer pickings of the summer balagans.