ndians. Their ballads are all of a
melancholy, imaginative character, inspired apparently by grief, love,
or domestic feeling, rather than by the ruder passions of pride,
anger, and revenge. Their music all has a wild, strange sound to a
foreign ear, but it conveys to the mind in some way a sense of sorrow,
and vague, unavailing regret for something that has for ever passed
away, like the emotion excited by a funeral dirge over the grave of a
dear friend. As Ossian says of the music of Carryl, "it is like the
memory of joys that are past--sweet, yet mournful to the soul." I
remember particularly a song called the Penzhinski, sung one night by
the natives at Lesnoi, which was, without exception, the sweetest, and
yet the most inexpressibly mournful combination of notes that I had
ever heard. It was a wail of a lost soul, despairing, yet pleading for
mercy. I tried in vain to get a translation of the words. Whether it
was the relation of some bloody and disastrous encounter with their
fiercer northern neighbours, or the lament over the slain body of some
dear son, brother, or husband, I could not learn; but the music alone
will bring the tears near one's eyes, and has an indescribable effect
upon the singers, whose excitable feelings it sometimes works up
almost to the pitch of frenzy. The dancing tunes of the Kamchadals
are of course entirely different in character, being generally very
lively, and made up of energetic staccato passages, repeated many
times in succession, without variation. Nearly all the natives
accompany themselves upon a three-cornered guitar with two strings,
called a _ballalaika_ (bahl-lah-lai'-kah), and some of them play quite
well upon rude home-made violins. All are passionately fond of music
of every kind.

The only other amusements in which they indulge are dancing, playing
football on the snow in winter, and racing with dog-teams.

The winter travel of the Kamchadals is accomplished entirely upon
dog-sledges, and in no other pursuit of their lives do they spend more
time or exhibit their native skill and ingenuity to better advantage.
They may even be said to have made dogs for themselves in the first
place, since the present Siberian animal is nothing more than a
half-domesticated arctic wolf, and still retains all his wolfish
instincts and peculiarities. There is probably no more hardy, enduring
animal in the world. You may compel him to sleep out on the snow in a
temperature of 70 deg. be