ANOE RAFT--RECEPTION AT
MILKOVA--MISTAKEN FOR THE TSAR

To a person of an indolent disposition there is something particularly
pleasant in floating in a boat down a river. One has all the
advantages of variety, and change of incident and scenery, without any
exertion; all the lazy pleasures--for such they must be called--of
boat life, without any of the monotony which makes a long sea voyage
so unendurable. I think it was Gray who said that his idea of paradise
was "To lie on a sofa and read eternally new romances of Marivaux and
Crebillon." Could the author of the "Elegy" have stretched himself out
on the open deck of a Kamchadal boat, covered to a depth of six inches
with fragrant flowers and freshly cut hay; could he have floated
slowly down a broad, tranquil river through ranges of snow-clad
mountains, past forests glowing with yellow and crimson, and vast
steppes waving with tall, wild grass; could he have watched the
full moon rise over the lonely, snowy peak of the Kluchefskoi
(kloo'-chef-skoi') volcano, bridging the river with a narrow trail
of quivering light, and have listened to the plash of the boatman's
paddles, and the low melancholy song to which they kept time--he would
have thrown Marivaux and Crebillon overboard, and have given a better
example of the pleasures of paradise.

I know that I am laying myself open to the charge of exaggeration by
thus praising Kamchatkan scenery, and that my enthusiasm will perhaps
elicit a smile of amusement from the more experienced traveller who
has seen Italy and the Alps; still, I am describing things as they
appeared to me, and do not assert that the impressions they made were
those that should or would have been made upon a man of more extensive
experience and wider observation. To use the words of a Spanish
writer, which I have somewhere read, "The man who has never seen the
glory of the sun cannot be blamed for thinking that there is no glory
like that of the moon; nor he who has never seen the moon, for talking
of the unrivalled brightness of the morning star." Had I ever sailed
down the Rhine, climbed the Matterhorn, or seen the moon rise over
the Bay of Naples, I should have taken perhaps a juster and less
enthusiastic view of Kamchatka; but, compared with anything that I had
previously seen or imagined, the mountain landscapes of southern and
central Kamchatka were superb.

At Sherom, thanks to the courier who had preceded us, we found a boat,
or Kamchatka