KAMTSCHATKA

KAMTSCHATKA is inhabited by a people, who are represented in the Encyclopaedia as possessing almost every quality that can disgrace human nature. We think it incumbent upon us to acknowledge, in this place, that a much more favourable picture of them is drawn by La Perouse who visited Kamtschatka in September 1787. The Russian governor made the commodore and his officers remark the promising appearance of several small fields of potatoes, of which the feed had been brought from Irkoutsk a few years before; and purposed to adopt mild, though infallible means, of making farmers of the Russians, Cossacks, and Kamtschadales. The small-pox in 1769 swept away three-fourths of the individuals of the latter nation, which is now reduced to less than four thousand persons, scattered over the whole of the peninsula; and which will speedily disappear altogether, by means of the continual mixture of the Russians and Kamtschadales, who frequently intermarry. A mongrel race, more laborious than the Russians, who are only fit for soldiers, and much stronger, and of a form less disgraceful to the hand of nature, than the Kamtschadales, will spring from these marriages, and succeed the ancient inhabitants. The natives have already abandoned the yurts, in which they used to burrow like badgers during the whole of the winter, and where they breathed an air so foul as to occasion a number of disorders. The most opulent among them now build isbas, or wooden houses, in the manner of the Russians. They are precisely of the same form as the cottages of our peasants; are divided into three little rooms; and are warmed by a brick stove, that keeps up a degree of heat (B) insupportable to persons unaccustomed to it. The rest pass the winter, as well as the summer, in balagans, which are a kind of wooden pigeon-houses, covered with thatch, and placed upon the top of posts twelve or thirteen feet high, to which the women as well as the men climb by means of ladders that afford a footing very insecure. But these latter buildings will soon disappear; for the Kamtschadales are of an imitative genius, and adopt almost all the customs of their conquerors. Already the women wear their hair, and are almost entirely dressed, in the manner of the Russians, whose language prevails in all the ostrogs; a fortunate circumstance, since each Kamtschadian village spoke a different jargon, the inhabitants of one hamlet not understanding that of the next. It may be said in praise of the Russians, that though they have established a despotic government in this rude climate, it is tempered by a mildness and equity that render its inconveniences unfelt. They have no reproaches of atrocity to make themselves, like the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru. The taxes they levy on the Kamtschadales are so light, that they can only be considered as a mark of gratitude towards the sovereign, the produce of half a day's hunting acquitting the imposts of a year. It is surprising to see in cottages, to all appearance more miserable than those of the most wretched hamlets in our mountainous provinces, a quantity of species in circulation, which appears the more considerable, because it exists among so small a number of inhabitants. They consume so few commodities of Russia and China, that the balance of trade is entirely in their favour, and that it is absolutely cessary to pay them the difference in rubles. Furs at Kamtschatka are at a much higher price than at Canton; which proves, that as yet the market of Kiatcha has not felt the advantageous effect of the new channel opened in China. Our author compares Kamtschatka, with respect to climate and soil, to the coast of Labrador in the vicinity of the Straits of Belle-Isle; but the men, like the animals, are there very different. The Kamtschadales appeared to him the same people as those of the bay of Castries, upon the coast of Tartary. Their mildness and their probity are the same, and their persons are very little different. They ought then no more to be compared to the Esquimaux Indians, than the fables of Kamtschatka to the martins of Canada. The Greek religion has been established among the Kamtschadales without persecution or violence, and with extraordinary facility. The vicar of Paratouinka is the son of a Kamtschadale and of a Russian woman. He delivers his prayers and catechism with a tone of feeling very (A) This we think incredible. (B) Not less than thirty degrees of Reaumur's thermometer. Kamtchatka very much to the taste of the aborigines, who reward his cares with offerings and alms, but pay no tythes. The canons of the Greek church permitting priests to marry, we may conclude that the morals of the country clergy are so much the better. "I believe them, however (says Perouse), to be very ignorant; and do not suppose, that for a long time to come they will stand in need of greater knowledge. The daughter, the wife, and the sister of the vicar, were the best dancers of all the women, and appeared to enjoy the best state of health. The worthy priest knew that we were good Catholics, which procured us an ample asperision of holy water; and he also made us kiss the cross that was carried by his clerk: these ceremonies were performed in the midst of the village. His parsonage-house was a tent, and his altar in the open air; but his usual abode is Paratounka, and he only came to St Peter and St Paul's to pay us a visit." The people of Kamtchatka have injured themselves to the extremes of heat and cold. It is well known, that their custom in Europe, as well as in Asia, is to go into vapour baths, come out covered with perspiration, and immediately roll themselves in the snow. The ofrog of St Peter had two of these public baths, into which our author went before the fires were lighted. They consist of a very low room, in the middle of which is an oven constructed of stones, without cement, and heated like those intended to bake bread. Its arched roof is surrounded by seats one above another, like an amphitheatre, for those who wish to bathe, so that the heat is greater or less according as the person is placed upon a higher or lower bench. Water thrown upon the top of the roof, when heated red hot by the fire underneath, is converted instantly into vapour, and excites the most profuse perspiration. The Kamtchadales have borrowed this custom, as well as many others, from their conquerors; and ere long the primitive character that distinguished them so strongly from the Russians will be entirely effaced. Our author describes the bay of Avatscha as the finest, the most convenient, and the safest, that is to be met with in any part of the world. The entrance is narrow, and ships would be forced to pass under the guns of the forts that might be easily erected. The bottom is mud, and excellent holding ground. Two vast harbours, one on the eastern side, the other on the western, are capable of containing all the ships of the French and English navy. The rivers of Avatscha and Paratounka fall into this bay, but they are choked up with sand-banks, and can only be entered at the time of high water. The village of St Peter and St Paul is situated upon a tongue of land, which, like a jetty made by human art, forms behind the village a little port, shut in like an amphitheatre, in which three or four vessels might lie up for the winter. The entrance of this sort of basin is more than twenty-five toises wide; and nature can afford nothing more safe or commodious. On its shore the governor proposed to lay down the plan of a city, which some time or other will be the capital of Kamtchatka, and perhaps the centre of an extensive trade with China, Japan, the Philippines, and America. A vast pond of fresh water is situated northward of the site of this projected city; and at only three hundred toises distance run a number of streamlets, the easy union of which would give the ground all the advantages necessary to a great establishment. Of these advantages Mr. Kallot understood the value; "but first (said he a thousand times over) we must have bread and hands, and our stock of both of them is very small." He had, however, given orders, which announced a speedy union of the other ofrogs to that of St Peter and St Paul, where it was his intention immediately to build a church. By observation, St Peter and St Paul was found to be in 53° 1' N. Lat. and 156° 30' E. Long. from Paris.