The panorama of Kamtschatka is a confused heap of granite blocks of various heights, thickly piled together, whose pointed, jagged forms bear testimony to the tremendous war of elements amidst which they must have burst from the bowels of the earth. The struggle is even now scarcely ended, as the smoking and burning of volcanoes, and frequent shocks of earthquake, sufficiently intimate. One of the mountains, called Kamtschatka Mountain, rivalling in height the loftiest in the world, often vomits forth streams of lava on the surrounding country. These mountains with their glaciers, and volcanoes emitting columns of fire and smoke from amidst fields of ice, afford a picturesque contrast with the beautiful green of the valleys. The most singular and indescribably-splendid effect is produced by the crystal rocks on the western coast, when illuminated by the sun; their whole refulgent surface reflecting his rays in every various tint of the most brilliant colours, resembles the diamond mountains of fairy-land, while the neighbouring rocks of quartz shine like masses of solid gold. Kamtschatka is a most interesting country to the professor of the natural sciences. Great mineral treasures will certainly be one day discovered here; the number and diversity of its stones is striking even to the most uninitiated. It abounds in hot and salutary springs. To the botanist it offers great varieties of plants, little if at all known; and the zoologist would find here, amongst the animal tribes deserving his attention, besides several kinds of bears, wolves and foxes, the celebrated sable whose skin is sold for so great a price, and the native wild sheep, which inhabits the tops of the highest mountains. It attains the size of a large goat; the head resembles that of an ordinary sheep, but is furnished with strong, crooked horns: the skin and form of the body are like the reindeer, and it feeds chiefly on moss. It is fleet and active, achieving, like the chamois, prodigious springs among the rocks and precipices, and is, consequently, with difficulty killed or taken. In preparing for these leaps, its eye measures the distance with surprising accuracy; the animal then contracts its legs, and darts forward head-foremost to the destined spot, where it alights upon its feet, nor is it ever known to miss, although the point may be so small as to admit its four feet only by their being closely pressed together. The manner in which it balances itself after such leaps is also admirable: our ballet-dancers would consider it a model of a perfect _a plomb_. The monster of the antediluvian world, the mammoth, must have been an inhabitant of this country, since many of its bones have been found here.