If I may judge of the soil, from what I saw of its vegetable productions, I should not hesitate in pronouncing it barren in the extreme.  Neither in the neighbourhood of the bay, nor in the country I traversed on my journey to Bolcheretsk, nor in any of our hunting expeditions, did I ever meet with the smallest spot of ground that resembled what in England is called a good green turf; or that seemed as if it could be turned to any advantage, either in the way of pasturage, or other mode of cultivation.  The face of the country in general was thinly covered with stunted trees, having a bottom of moss, mixed, with low weak heath.  The whole bore a more striking resemblance to Newfoundland, than to any other part of the world I had ever seen.

It must however be observed, that I saw at Paratounca three or four stacks of sweet and very fine-looking hay; and Major Behm informed me, that many parts of the peninsula, particularly the banks of the river Kamtschatka and the Bistraia, produce grass of great height and strength, which they cut twice in the summer; and that the hay is of a succulent quality, and particularly well adapted to the fattening of cattle.  Indeed it should appear, from the size and fatness of the thirty-six head that were sent down to us from the Verchnei ostrog, and which, we were told, were bred and fattened in the neighbourhood, that they must have had the advantage of both good pastures and meadows.  For it is worth our notice, that the first supply we received, consisting of twenty, came to us just at the close of the winter, and before the snow was off the ground, and therefore probably had tasted nothing but hay for the seven preceding months.  And this agrees with what is related by Krascheninnikoff, that there is no part of the country equal in fertility to that which borders on the river Kamtschatka; and that to the N. and S. it is much inferior both in point of soil and climate.  He relates, that repeated experiments have been made in the culture of oats, barley, and rye, in different quarters near this river, which have generally succeeded; that, in particular, some persons belonging to the convent of Jakutzk, who had settled in that part of the country, had sown barley there, which had yielded an extraordinary increase; and he has no doubt but that wheat, in many parts, particularly near the source of the Bistraia and Kamtschatka, would grow as well as in the generality of countries situated in the same latitude.  Perhaps the superior fertility of the country here spoken of, may, in a great measure, be accounted for, from its lying in that part of the peninsula which is by much the widest, and consequently farthest removed from the sea, on each side.  The moist chilling fogs and drizzling weather which prevail almost perpetually along the coast, must necessarily render the parts adjacent very unfit for all the purposes of agriculture.[43]