Unimportant as was the place where we now landed, a change is always agreeable after a long voyage; and the kind and hospitable reception we met with from the commander as well as the inhabitants, contributed greatly to our enjoyments. We were gratified with a bear-hunt, which produced much sport, and gave us the satisfaction of killing a large and powerful bear. This animal is very numerous here, and is consequently easily met with by a hunting-party. The usually timid Kamtschatkan attacks them with the greatest courage. Often armed only with a lance and a knife, he endeavours to provoke the bear to the combat; and when it rises on its hind legs for defence or attack, the hunter rushes forward, and, resting one end of the lance on the ground, plunges the other into its breast, finally dispatching it with his knife. Sometimes, however, he fails in the attempt, and pays for his temerity with his life. The following anecdote evinces the hardihood of the bears. Fish, which forms their chief nourishment, and which they procure for themselves from the rivers, was last year excessively scarce. A great famine consequently existed among them, and instead of retiring to their dens, they wandered about the whole winter through, even in the streets of St. Peter and St. Paul. One of them finding the outer gate of a house open, entered, and the gate accidentally closed after him. The woman of the house had just placed a large tea-machine,[1] full of boiling water, in the court, the bear smelt to it and burned his nose; provoked at the pain, he vented all his fury upon the kettle, folded his fore-paws round it, pressed it with his whole strength against his breast to crush it, and burnt himself, of course, still more and more. The horrible growl which rage and pain forced from him, brought all the inhabitants of the house and neighbourhood to the spot, and poor bruin was soon dispatched by shots from the windows. He has, however, immortalized his memory, and become a proverb amongst the town's people, for when any one injures himself by his own violence, they call him "the bear with the tea-kettle." On the 14th of July, M. Preuss observed an eclipse of the sun, from which he determined the geographical longitude of St. Peter and St. Paul to be 201 deg. 10' 31". On the same day Dr. Siegwald and Messrs. Lenz and Hoffman happily achieved the Herculean task of climbing the Owatscha Mountain, which lies near the harbour. Its height, according to barometrical measurement, is seven thousand two hundred feet. An intermittent smoke arose from its crater, and a cap let down a few feet within it was drawn up burnt. The gentlemen brought back with them some pieces of crystallized sulphur, as evidence of their having really pursued their examination quite into the mouth of the crater.