of specie in circulation in so poor a country.  The furs sell at a high price, and the situation and habits of life of the natives call for few articles in return.  Our sailors brought a great number of furs with them from the coast of America, and were not less astonished than delighted with the quantity of silver the merchants paid down for them; but on finding neither gin-shops to resort to, nor tobacco, nor any thing else that they cared for, to be had for money, the roubles soon became troublesome companions; and I often observed them kicking about the deck.  The merchant I have already had occasion to mention, gave our men at first thirty roubles for a sea-otter’s skin, and for others in proportion; but finding that they had considerable quantities to dispose of, and that he had men to deal with who did not know how to keep up the market, he afterward bought them for much less.

The articles of importation are principally European, but not confined to Russian manufactures; many are English and Dutch; several likewise come from Siberia, Bucharia, the Calmucks, and China.  They consist of coarse woollen and linen clothes, yarn-stockings, bonnets, and gloves; thin Persian silks; cottons, and pieces of nankeen, silk and cotton handkerchiefs; brass coppers and pans, iron-stoves, files, guns, powder, and shot; hardware, such as hatchets, bills, knives, scissars, needles; looking-glasses, flour, sugar; tanned hides, boots, &c.  We had an opportunity of seeing a great many of these articles in the hands of a merchant, who came in the empress’s galliot from Okotzk; and I shall only observe generally, that they sold for treble the price they might have been purchased for in England.  And though the merchants have so large a profit upon these imported goods, they have a still larger upon the furs at Kiachta, upon the frontiers of China, which is the great market for them.  The best sea-otter skins sell generally in Kamtschatka for about thirty roubles a-piece.  The Chinese merchant at Kiachta purchases them at more than double that price, and sells them again at Pekin at a great advance, where a farther profitable trade is made with some of them to Japan.  If, therefore, a skin is worth thirty roubles in Kamtschatka, to be transported first to Okotzk, thence to be conveyed by land to Kiachta, a distance of one thousand three-hundred and sixty-four miles; and thence on to Pekin, seven hundred and sixty miles more; and after this to be transported to Japan, what a prodigiously advantageous trade might be carried on between this place and Japan, which is about a fortnight’s, or at most three weeks, sail from it?

All furs exported from hence across the sea of Okotzk, pay a duty of ten per cent., and sables a duty of twelve.  And all sorts of merchandise, of whatever denomination, imported from Okotzk, pay half a rouble for every pood.[83]

The duties arising from the exports and imports, of which I could not learn the amount, are paid at Okotzk; but the tribute is collected at Bolcheretsk; and, I was informed by Major Behm, amounted in value to ten thousand roubles annually.