able for their expertness in this business. At ten we got
to the _ostrog_, the seat of his command, where we were received at the
water-side by the Kamtschadale men and women, and some Russian servants
belonging to Fedositsch, who were employed in making canoes. They were all
dressed out in their best clothes. Those of the women were pretty and gay,
consisting of a full loose robe of white nankeen, gathered close round the
neck, and fastened with a collar of coloured silk. Over this they wore a
short jacket without sleeves, made of different-coloured nankeens, and
petticoats of a slight Chinese silk. Their shirts, which had sleeves down
to the wrist, were also of silk; and coloured silk handkerchiefs were bound
round their heads, concealing entirely the hair of the married women,
whilst those who were unmarried brought the handkerchief under the hair,
and suffered it to flow loose behind.

This _ostrog_ was pleasantly situated by the side of the river, and
consisted of three log-houses, three _jourts_, or houses made under ground,
and nineteen _balagans_, or summer habitations. We were conducted to the
tent of the _Toion_, who was a plain decent man, born of a Russian woman,
by a Kamtschadale father. His house, like all the rest in this country, was
divided into two apartments. A long narrow table, with a bench round it,
was all the furniture we saw in the outer; and the household stuff of the
inner, which was the kitchen, was not less simple and scanty. But the kind
attention of our host, and the hearty welcome we received, more than
compensated for the poverty of his lodgings.

His wife proved an excellent cook, and served us with fish and game of
different sorts, and various kinds of heath-berries, that had been kept
since the last year. Whilst we were at dinner in this miserable hut, the
guests of a people, with whose existence we had before been scarce
acquainted, and at the extremity of the habitable globe, a solitary, half-
worn pewter spoon, whose shape was familiar to us, attracted our attention;
and, on examination, we found it stamped on the back with the word
_London_. I cannot pass over this circumstance in silence, out of gratitude
for the many pleasant thoughts, the anxious hopes, and tender remembrances
it excited in us. Those who have experienced the effects that long absence
and extreme distance from their native county produce on the mind, will
readily conceive the pleasure such trifling incidents can