and entered the bath-room proper, which was certainly dark enough and black enough to justify the gloomiest, murkiest adjective in the language.  A tallow candle, which was burning feebly on the floor, gave just light enough to distinguish the outlines of a low, bare apartment, about ten feet square, built solidly of unhewn logs, without a single opening for the admission of air or light.  Every square inch of the walls and ceiling was perfectly black with a sooty deposit from the clouds of smoke with which the room had been filled in the process of heating.  A large pile of stones, with a hollow place underneath for a fire, stood in one end of the room, and a series of broad steps, which did not seem to lead anywhere, occupied the other.  As soon as the fire had gone out, the chimney-hole had been closed and hermetically sealed, and the pile of hot stones was now radiating a fierce dry heat, which made respiration a painful duty, and perspiration an unpleasant necessity.  The presiding spirit of this dark, infernal place of torture soon made his appearance in the shape of a long-haired, naked Kamchadal, and proceeded to throw water upon the pile of red-hot stones until they hissed like a locomotive, and the candle burned blue in the centre of a steamy halo.  I thought it was hot before, but it was a Siberian winter compared with the temperature which this manoeuvre produced.  My very bones seemed melting with fervent heat.  After getting the air of the room as nearly as possible up to 212 deg., the native seized me by the arm, spread me out on the lowest of the flight of steps, poured boiling suds over my face and feet with reckless impartiality, and proceeded to knead me up, as if he fully intended to separate me into my original elements.  I will not attempt to describe the number, the variety, and the diabolical ingenuity of the tortures to which I was subjected during the next twenty minutes.  I was scrubbed, rolled, pounded, drenched with cold water and scalded with hot, beaten with bundles of birch twigs, rubbed down with wads of hemp which scraped like brickbats, and finally left to recover my breath upon the highest and hottest step of the whole stairway.  A douse of cold water finally put an end to the ordeal and to my misery; and, groping my way out into the entry, I proceeded, with chattering teeth, to dress.  In a moment I was joined by the Major, and we resumed our walk, feeling like disembodied spirits.

Owing to the lateness of the hour, we were compelled to postpone indefinitely our visit to the church; but we had been sufficiently amused for one day, and returned to the house satisfied, if not delighted, with our experience of Kamchatkan black baths.

The evening was spent in questioning the inhabitants of the village about the northern part of the peninsula, and the facilities for travel among the wandering Koraks; and before nine o’clock we went to bed, in order that we might make an early start on the following morning.