ngitudinally divided comprises even now
five or six volcanoes in a state of almost uninterrupted activity.
This immense chain of mountains, which has never even been named,
stretches from the fifty-first to the sixtieth degree of latitude in
one almost continuous ridge, and at last breaks off abruptly into the
Okhotsk Sea, leaving to the northward a high level steppe called
the "dole" or desert, which is the wandering ground of the Reindeer
Koraks. The central and southern parts of the peninsula are broken
up by the spurs and foot-hills of the great mountain range into deep
sequestered valleys of the wildest and most picturesque character, and
afford scenery which, for majestic and varied beauty, is not surpassed
in all northern Asia. The climate everywhere, except in the extreme
north, is comparatively mild and equable, and the vegetation has an
almost tropical freshness and luxuriance totally at variance with all
one's ideas of Kamchatka. The population of the peninsula I estimate
from careful observation at about 5000, and it is made up of three
distinct classes--the Russians, the Kamchadals or settled natives, and
the Wandering Koraks. The Kamchadals, who compose the most numerous
class, are settled in little log villages throughout the peninsula,
near the mouths of small rivers which rise in the central range
of mountains and fall into the Okhotsk Sea or the Pacific. Their
principal occupations are fishing, fur-trapping, and the cultivation
of rye, turnips, cabbages, and potatoes, which grow thriftily as far
north as lat. 58 deg.. Their largest settlements are in the fertile
valley of the Kamchatka River, between Petropavlovsk and Kluchei
(kloo-chay'). The Russians, who are comparatively few in number,
are scattered here and there among the Kamchadal villages, and are
generally engaged in trading for furs with the Kamchadals and the
nomadic tribes to the northward. The Wandering Koraks, who are the
wildest, most powerful, and most independent natives in the peninsula,
seldom come south of the 58th parallel of latitude, except for the
purpose of trade. Their chosen haunts are the great desolate steppes
lying east of Penzhinsk (pen'-zhinsk) Gulf, where they wander
constantly from place to place in solitary bands, living in large fur
tents and depending for subsistence upon their vast herds of tamed and
domesticated reindeer. The government under which all the inhabitants
of Kamchatka nominally live is administered by