etting. A few scattered
lights from the village threw long streams of radiance across the dark
water, and from the black hillside on our right was heard at intervals
the faint lonely tinkle of a cow-bell or the long melancholy howl of
a wolf-like dog. I tried hard to sleep; but the novelty of our
surroundings, the thought that we were now in Asia, and hundreds
of conjectures and forecastings as to our future prospects and
adventures, put sleep for a long time at defiance.

The hamlet of Petropavlovsk, which, although not the largest, is one
of the most important settlements in the Kamchatkan peninsula, has
a population of perhaps two or three hundred natives and Russian
peasants, together with a few German and American merchants, drawn
thither by the trade in sables. It is not fairly a representative
Kamchatkan village, for it has felt in no inconsiderable degree the
civilising influences of foreign intercourse, and shows in its manners
and modes of life and thought some evidences of modern enterprise and
enlightenment. It has existed since the early part of the eighteenth
century, and is old enough to have acquired some civilisation of its
own; but age in a Siberian settlement is no criterion of development,
and Petropavlovsk either has not attained the enlightenment of
maturity, or has passed into its second childhood, for it is still in
a benighted condition. Why it was and is called Petropavlovsk--the
village of St. Peter and St. Paul--I failed, after diligent inquiry,
to learn. The sacred canon does not contain any epistle to the
Kamchatkans, much as they need it, nor is there any other evidence to
show that the ground on which the village stands was ever visited by
either of the eminent saints whose names it bears. The conclusion to
which we are driven therefore is, that its inhabitants, not being
distinguished for apostolic virtues, and feeling their need of saintly
intercession, called the settlement after St. Peter and St. Paul, with
the hope that those Apostles would feel a sort of proprietary interest
in the place, and secure its final salvation without any unnecessary
inquiries into its merits. Whether that was the idea of its original
founders or not I cannot say; but such a plan would be eminently
adapted to the state of society, in most of the Siberian settlements,
where faith is strong, but where works are few in number and
questionable in tendency.

The sights of Petropavlovsk, speaking after the mann