canic energies in early life, and was now left without
a voice to answer the thundering shouts of its mighty comrade. There
was a time when volcanoes were as numerous in Kamchatka as knights
around the table of King Arthur, and the peninsula trembled to the
thunder of their shoutings and midnight jollity; but one after
another they had been suffocated with the fiery streams of their own
eloquence, until at last Kluchefskoi was left alone, calling to its
old companions throughout the silent hours of long winter nights, but
hearing no response save the faint far-away echoes of its own mighty
voice.

I was waked early on the following morning by the jubilant music of
"Oh, Su-_san'_-na-a-a, don't ye cry for me!" and crawling out of the
tent I surprised one of our native boatmen in the very act of drumming
on a frying-pan and yelling out joyously:

"Litenin' struck de telegraf,
Killed two thousand niggers;
Shut my eyes to hole my breff,
Su-_san'_-na-a-a, don't ye cry!"

A comical skin-clad native, in the heart of Kamchatka, playing on a
frying-pan and singing, "Oh, Susanna!" like an arctic negro minstrel,
was too much for my gravity, and I burst into a fit of laughter,
which, soon brought out Dodd. The musician, who had supposed that he
was exercising his vocal organs unheard, stopped suddenly, and looked
sheepishly around, as if conscious that he had been making himself
ridiculous in some way, but did not know exactly how.

"Why, Andrei," said Dodd, "I didn't know you could sing in English."

"I can't, Barin," was the reply; "but I can sing a little in
_American_."

Dodd and I went off in another roar of laughter, which puzzled poor
Andrei more and more.

"Where did you learn?" Dodd asked.

"The sailors of a whaling-ship learned it to me when I was in
Petropavlovsk, two years ago; isn't it a good song?" he said,
evidently fearing that there might be something improper in the
sentiment.

"It's a capital song," Dodd replied reassuringly; "do you know any
more American words?"

"Oh yes, your honour!" (proudly) "I know 'dam yerize,' 'by 'm bye
tomorry,' 'no savey John,' and 'goaty hell,' but I don't know what
they all mean."

It was evident that he didn't! His American education was of limited
extent and doubtful utility; but not even Cardinal Mezzofanti himself
could have been more proud of his forty languages than poor Andrei
was of "dam yerize" and "goaty hell." If ever he reached America, the
bless