We had a fine leading wind from the south-east, and were now going through the water at the rate of seven knots.  Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock, and still no appearance of land, although we had made since daylight more than thirty miles.  At eleven o’clock, however, the horizon gradually darkened, and all at once a bold headland, terminating in a precipitous cliff, loomed up out of a thin mist at a distance of only four miles.  All was at once excitement.  The topgallant sails were clewed up to reduce the vessel’s speed, and her course was changed so that we swept round in a curve broadside to the coast, about three miles distant.  The mountain peaks, by which we might have ascertained our position, were hidden by the clouds and fog, and it was no easy matter to ascertain exactly where we were.

Away to the left, dimly defined in the mist, were two or three more high blue headlands, but what they were, and where the harbour of Petropavlovsk might be, were questions that no one could answer.  The captain brought his charts, compass, and drawing instruments on deck, laid them on the cabin skylight, and began taking the bearings of the different headlands, while we eagerly scanned the shore with glasses, and gave free expressions to our several opinions as to our situation.  The Russian chart which the captain had of the coast was fortunately a good one, and he soon determined our position, and the names of the headlands first seen.  We were just north of Cape Povorotnoi, about nine miles south of the entrance of Avacha Bay.  The yards were now squared, and we went off on the new tack before a steady breeze from the south-east.  In less than an hour we sighted the high isolated rocks known as the “Three Brothers,” passed a rocky precipitous island, surrounded by clouds of shrieking gulls and parrot-billed ducks, and by two o’clock were off “the heads” of Avacha Bay, on which is situated the village of Petropavlovsk.  The scenery at the entrance more than equalled our highest anticipations.  Green grassy valleys stretched away from openings in the rocky coast until they were lost in the distant mountains; the rounded bluffs were covered with clumps of yellow birch and thickets of dark-green chaparral; patches of flowers could be seen on the warm sheltered slopes of the hills; and as we passed close under the lighthouse bluff, Bush shouted joyously, “Hurrah, there’s clover!” “Clover!” exclaimed the captain contemptuously, “there ain’t any clover in the Ar’tic Regions!” “How do you know, you’ve never been there,” retorted Bush caustically; “it looks like clover, and”—­looking through a glass—­“it is clover”; and his face lighted up as if the discovery of clover had relieved his mind of a great deal of anxiety as to the severity of the Kamchatkan climate.  It was a sort of vegetable exponent of temperature, and out of a little patch of clover, Bush’s imagination developed, in a style undreamt of by Darwin, the whole luxuriant flora of the temperate zone.