The population (5846 in 1870) was 7270 in 1900. The southern part of the peninsula is occupied by Kamchadales, who exhibit many attributes of the Mongolian race, but are more similar to the aborigines of N.E. Asia and N.W. America. Fishing (quantities of salmon enter the rivers) and hunting are their chief occupations. Dog-sledges are principally used as means of communication. The efforts of the government to introduce cattle-breeding have failed. The Kamchadale language cannot be assigned to any known group; its vocabulary is extremely poor. The purity of the tongue is best preserved by the people of the Penzhinsk district on the W. coast. North of 57 deg. N. the peninsula is peopled with Koryaks, settled and nomad, and Lamuts (Tunguses), who came from the W. coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. The principal Russian settlements are: Petropavlovsk, on the E. coast, on Avacha Bay, with an excellent roadstead; Verkhne-Kamchatsk and Nizhne-Kamchatsk in the valley of the Kamchatka river; Bolsheryetsk, on the Bolshaya; and Tighil, on the W. coast. The Russians made their first settlements in Kamchatka in the end of the 17th century; in 1696 Atlasov founded Verkhne-Kamchatsk, and in 1704 Robelev founded Bolsheryetsk. In 1720 a survey of the peninsula was undertaken; in 1725-1730 it was visited by Bering's expedition; and in 1733-1745 it was the scene of the labours of the Krasheninnikov and Steller expedition. See G. A. Erman, _Reise um die Erde_ iii., (Berlin, 1848); C. von Ditmar, _Reisen und Aufenthalt in Kamchatka in den Jahren 1851-1855_ (1890-1900); G. Kennan, _Tent Life in Siberia_ (1870), and paper in _Jour. of American Geog. Soc._ (1876); K. Diener, in _Petermann's Mitteilungen_ (1891, vol. xxxvii.); V. A. Obruchev, in _Izvestia_ of the East Siberian Geographical Society (xxiii. 4, 5; 1892); F. H. H. Guillemard, _Cruise of the "Marchesa"_ (2nd ed., London, 1889); and G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton in _Scott. Geog. Mag._ (May, 1899), with bibliography. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.) KAME (a form of Scandinavian _comb_, hill), in physical geography, a short ridge or bunched mound of gravel or sand, "tumultuously stratified," occurring in connexion with glacial deposits, having been formed at the mouths of tunnels under the ice. When the ice-sheet melts, these features, formerly concealed by the glacier, are revealed. They are common in the glaciated portions of the lower Scottish valleys. By some authorities the term "kame," or specifically "serpentine kame," is taken as synonymous with "esker," which however is preferably to be applied to the long mound deposited within the ice-tunnel, not to the bunched mound at its mouth.