A Kamchadal village differs in some respects so widely from an American frontier settlement, that it is worthy, perhaps, of a brief description. It is situated generally on a little elevation near the bank of some river or stream, surrounded by scattered clumps of poplar and yellow birch, and protected by high hills from the cold northern winds. Its houses, which are clustered irregularly together near the beach, are very low, and are made of logs squared and notched at the ends, and chinked with masses of dry moss. The roofs are covered with a rough thatch of long coarse grass or with overlapping strips of tamarack bark, and project at the ends and sides into wide overhanging eaves. The window-frames, although occasionally glazed, are more frequently covered with an irregular patchwork of translucent fish bladders, sewn together with thread made of the dried and pounded sinews of the reindeer. The doors are almost square, and the chimneys are nothing but long straight poles, arranged in a circle and plastered over thickly with clay. Here and there between the houses stand half a dozen curious architectural quadrupeds called "balagáns" (bah-lah-gans'), or fish storehouses. They are simply conical log tents, elevated from the ground on four posts to secure their contents from the dogs, and resemble as much as anything small haystacks trying to walk away on four legs. High square frames of horizontal poles stand beside every house, filled with thousands of drying salmon; and "an ancient and fish-like smell," which pervades the whole atmosphere, betrays the nature of the Kamchadals' occupation and of the food upon which they live. Half a dozen dugout canoes lie bottom upward on the sandy shelving beach, covered with large neatly tied seines; two or three long, narrow dog-sledges stand up on their ends against every house, and a hundred or more sharp-eared wolfish dogs, tied at intervals to long heavy poles, lie panting in the sun, snapping viciously at the flies and mosquitoes which disturb their rest. In the centre of the village, facing the west, stands, in all the glory of Kamchatko-Byzantine architecture, red paint, and glittering domes, the omnipresent Greek church, contrasting strangely with the rude log houses and conical _balagáns_ over which it extends the spiritual protection of its resplendent golden cross. It is built generally of carefully hewn logs, painted a deep brick-red, covered with a green sheet-iron roof, and surmounted by two onion-shaped domes of tin which are sometimes coloured sky-blue and spangled with golden stars. Standing with all its glaring contrasts of colour among a few unpainted log houses in a primitive wilderness, it has a strange picturesque appearance not easily described. If you can imagine a rough American backwoods settlement of low log houses clustered round a gaily coloured Turkish mosque, half a dozen small haystacks mounted on high vertical posts, fifteen or twenty Titanic wooden gridirons