to Fedositsch, who were employed in making canoes.  They were all dressed out in their best clothes.  Those of the women were pretty and gay, consisting of a full loose robe of white nankeen, gathered close round the neck, and fastened with a collar of coloured silk.  Over this they wore a short jacket without sleeves, made of different-coloured nankeens, and petticoats of a slight Chinese silk.  Their shirts, which had sleeves down to the wrist, were also of silk; and coloured silk handkerchiefs were bound round their heads, concealing entirely the hair of the married women, whilst those who were unmarried brought the handkerchief under the hair, and suffered it to flow loose behind.

This ostrog was pleasantly situated by the side of the river, and consisted of three log-houses, three jourts, or houses made under ground, and nineteen balagans, or summer habitations.  We were conducted to the tent of the Toion, who was a plain decent man, born of a Russian woman, by a Kamtschadale father.  His house, like all the rest in this country, was divided into two apartments.  A long narrow table, with a bench round it, was all the furniture we saw in the outer; and the household stuff of the inner, which was the kitchen, was not less simple and scanty.  But the kind attention of our host, and the hearty welcome we received, more than compensated for the poverty of his lodgings.

His wife proved an excellent cook, and served us with fish and game of different sorts, and various kinds of heath-berries, that had been kept since the last year.  Whilst we were at dinner in this miserable hut, the guests of a people, with whose existence we had before been scarce acquainted, and at the extremity of the habitable globe, a solitary, half-worn pewter spoon, whose shape was familiar to us, attracted our attention; and, on examination, we found it stamped on the back with the word London.  I cannot pass over this circumstance in silence, out of gratitude for the many pleasant thoughts, the anxious hopes, and tender remembrances it excited in us.  Those who have experienced the effects that long absence and extreme distance from their native county produce on the mind, will readily conceive the pleasure such trifling incidents can give.  To the philosopher and politician they may perhaps suggest reflections of a different nature.[15]

We were now to quit the river, and perform the next part of our journey on sledges; but the thaw had been too powerful in the day-time to allow us to set out till the cold of the evening had again made the surface of the snow hard and firm.  This gave us an opportunity of walking about the village, which was the only place we had yet seen free from snow since we landed in this country.  It stood upon a well-wooded flat, about a mile and a half in circumference.  The leaves were just budding, and the verdure of the whole scene was strongly contrasted with the sides of the