The houses in Bolcheretsk are all of one fashion, being built of logs, and thatched.  That of the commander is much larger than the rest, consisting of three rooms of a considerable size, neatly papered, and which might have been reckoned handsome, if the talc with which the windows were covered, had not given them a poor and disagreeable appearance.  The town consists of several rows of low buildings, each consisting of five or six dwellings, connected together, with a long common passage running the length of them, on one side of which is the kitchen and store-house, and on the other the dwelling apartments.  Besides these are barracks for the Russian soldiers and cossacks, a well-looking church, and a court-room, and at the end of the town a great number of balagans, belonging to the Kamtschadales.  The inhabitants, taken all together, amount to between five and six hundred.  In the evening the major gave a handsome entertainment, to which the principal people of the town of both sexes were invited.

The next morning we applied privately to the merchant, Fedositsch, to purchase some tobacco for the sailors, who had now been upward of a twelvemonth without this favourite commodity.  However, this, like all our other transactions of the same kind, came immediately to the major’s knowledge; and we were soon after surprised to find in our house four bags of tobacco, weighing-upward of a hundred pounds each, which he begged might be presented, in the name of himself and the garrison under his command, to our sailors.  At the same time they had sent us twenty loaves of fine sugar, and as many pounds of tea, being articles they understood we were in great want of, which they begged to be indulged in presenting to the officers.  Along with these Madame Behm had also sent a present for Captain Clerke, consisting of fresh-butter, honey, figs, rice, and some other little things of the same kind, attended with many wishes that, in his infirm state of health, they might be of service to him.  It was in vain we tried to oppose this profusion of bounty, which I was really anxious to restrain, being convinced that they were giving away, not a share, but almost the whole stock of the garrison.  The constant answer the major returned us on those occasions was, that we had suffered a great deal, and that we must needs be in distress.  Indeed the length of time we had been out since we touched at any known port, appeared to them so very incredible, that it required the testimony of our maps, and other corroborating circumstances, to gain their belief.  Amongst the latter was a very curious fact which Major Behm related to us this morning, and which, he said, but for our arrival, he should have been totally at a loss to account for.