vessel. High green hills swept in a
great semicircle of foliage around the little village, and almost shut
in the quiet pond-like harbour--an inlet of Avacha Bay--on which it
was situated. Under foresail and maintopsail we glided silently under
the shadow of the encircling hills into this landlocked mill-pond, and
within a stone's throw of the nearest house the sails were suddenly
clewed up, and with a quivering of the ship and a rattle of chain
cable our anchor dropped into the soil of Asia.

[Illustration: Boy's Boots of Sealskin]

CHAPTER IV

THINGS RUSSIAN IN KAMCHATKA--A VERDANT AND FLOWERY LAND--THE VILLAGE OF
TWO SAINTS.

It has been well observed by Irving, that to one about to visit
foreign countries a long sea voyage is an excellent preparative.
To quote his words, "The temporary absence of worldly scenes and
employments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receive
new and vivid impressions." And he might have added with equal
truth--favourable impressions. The tiresome monotony of sea life
predisposes the traveller to regard favourably anything that will
quicken his stagnating faculties and perceptions and furnish new
matter for thought; and the most commonplace scenery and circumstances
afford him gratification and delight. For this reason one is apt, upon
arriving after a long voyage in a strange country, to form a more
favourable opinion of its people and scenery than his subsequent
experience will sustain. But it seems to me particularly fortunate
that our first impressions of a new country, which are most clear and
vivid and therefore most lasting, are also most pleasant, so that in
future years a retrospective glance over our past wanderings will show
the most cheerful pictures drawn in the brightest and most enduring
colours. I am sure that the recollection of my first view of the
mountains of Kamchatka, the delight with which my eye drank in their
bright aerial tints, and the romance with which my ardent fancy
invested them, will long outlive the memory of the hardships I have
endured among them, the snow-storms that have pelted me on their
summits, and the rains that have drenched me in their valleys.
Fanciful perhaps, but I believe true.

The longing for land which one feels after having been five or six
weeks at sea is sometimes so strong as to be almost a passion. I
verily believe that if the first land we saw had been one of those
immense barren moss steppes which I afterw