he food upon
which they live. Half a dozen dugout canoes lie bottom upward on the
sandy shelving beach, covered with large neatly tied seines; two or
three long, narrow dog-sledges stand up on their ends against every
house, and a hundred or more sharp-eared wolfish dogs, tied at
intervals to long heavy poles, lie panting in the sun, snapping
viciously at the flies and mosquitoes which disturb their rest. In the
centre of the village, facing the west, stands, in all the glory of
Kamchatko-Byzantine architecture, red paint, and glittering domes,
the omnipresent Greek church, contrasting strangely with the rude log
houses and conical _balagans_ over which it extends the spiritual
protection of its resplendent golden cross. It is built generally of
carefully hewn logs, painted a deep brick-red, covered with a green
sheet-iron roof, and surmounted by two onion-shaped domes of tin
which are sometimes coloured sky-blue and spangled with golden
stars. Standing with all its glaring contrasts of colour among a few
unpainted log houses in a primitive wilderness, it has a strange
picturesque appearance not easily described. If you can imagine a
rough American backwoods settlement of low log houses clustered round
a gaily coloured Turkish mosque, half a dozen small haystacks mounted
on high vertical posts, fifteen or twenty Titanic wooden gridirons
similarly elevated and hung full of drying fish, a few dog-sledges and
canoes lying carelessly around, and a hundred or more grey wolves tied
here and there between the houses to long heavy poles, you will have a
general but tolerably accurate idea of a Kamchadal settlement of the
better class. They differ somewhat in respect to their size and their
churches; but the grey log houses, conical _balagans_ drying fish,
wolfish dogs, canoes, sledges, and fishy odours are all invariable
features.

The inhabitants of these native settlements in southern Kamchatka
are a dark swarthy race, considerably below the average stature of
Siberian natives, and are very different in all their characteristics
from the wandering tribes of Koraks and Chukchis who live farther
north. The men average perhaps five feet three or four inches in
height, have broad flat faces, prominent cheek bones, small and rather
sunken eyes, no beards, long, lank, black hair, small hands and feet,
very slender limbs, and a tendency to enlargement and protrusion of
the abdomen. They are probably of central Asiatic origin, but t