The Cossack who had been sent through the peninsula as an avant-courier to notify the natives of our coming, had carried the most exaggerated reports of our power and importance, and elaborate preparations had been made by the Jerusalemites for our reception. The house that was to be honoured by our presence had been carefully scrubbed, swept, and garnished; the women had put on their most flowery calico dresses, and tied their hair up in their brightest silk handkerchiefs; most of the children's faces had been painfully washed and polished with soap, water, and wads of fibrous hemp; the whole village had been laid under contribution to obtain the requisite number of plates, cups, and spoons, for our supper-table, while offerings of ducks, reindeer-tongues, blueberries, and clotted cream poured in upon us with a profusion which testified to the good-will and hospitality of the inhabitants, as well as to their ready appreciation of tired travellers' wants. In an hour we sat down, with appetites sharpened by the pure mountain air, to an excellent supper of cold roast duck, broiled reindeer-tongues, black-bread and fresh butter, blueberries and cream, and wild-rose petals crushed with white sugar into a rich delicious jam. We had come to Kamchatka with minds and mouths heroically made up for an unvarying diet of blubber, tallow candles, and train-oil; but imagine our surprise and delight at being treated instead to such Sybaritic luxuries as purple blueberries, cream, and preserved rose-leaves! Did Lucullus ever feast upon preserved rose-petals in his, vaunted pleasure-gardens of Tusculum? Never! The original recipe for the preparation of celestial ambrosia had been lost before ever "Lucullus supped with Lucullus"; but it was rediscovered by the despised inhabitants of Kamchatka, and is now offered, to the world as the first contribution of the Hyperboreans to gastronomical science. Take equal quantities of white loaf sugar and the petals of the Alpine rose, add a little juice of crushed blueberries, macerate together to a rich crimson paste, serve in the painted cups of trumpet honeysuckles, and imagine yourself feasting with the gods upon the summit of high Olympus! As soon as possible after supper, I stretched myself out upon the floor under a convenient table, which answered practically and aesthetically all the purposes of a four-post bedstead, inflated my little rubber pillow, rolled myself up, _à la_ mummy, in a blanket, and slept.