From Bragan we learned that there had been a heavy fall of snow on the mountains during the previous week; but he thought that the warm weather of the last three or four days had probably melted most of it away, and that the trail would be at least passable. He was willing at all events to try to take us across. Relieved of a good deal of anxiety, we left Harchina early on the morning of the 17th, and resumed our ascent of the river. On account of the rapidity of the current in the main stream, we turned aside into one of the many "protoks" (pro-tokes') or arms into which the river was here divided, and poled slowly up for four hours. The channel was very winding and narrow, so that one could touch with a paddle the bank on either side, and in many places the birches and willows met over the stream, dropping yellow leaves upon our heads as we passed underneath. Here and there long scraggy tree-trunks hung over the bank into the water, logs green with moss thrust their ends up from the depths of the stream, and more than once we seemed about to come to a stop in the midst of an impassable swamp. Nicolai Alexandrovich, our guide, whose canoe preceded ours, sang for our entertainment some of the monotonous melancholy songs of the Kamchadals, and Dodd and I in turn made the woods ring with the enlivening strains of "Kingdom Coming" and "Upidee." When we tired of music we made an amicable adjustment of our respective legs in the narrow canoe, and lying back upon our bearskins slept soundly, undisturbed by the splash of the water and the scraping of poles at our very ears. We camped that night on a high sandy beach over the water, ten or twelve miles south of Yolofka. It was a warm still evening, and as we all sat on our bearskins around the camp-fire, smoking and talking over the day's adventures, our attention was suddenly attracted by a low rumbling, like distant thunder, accompanied by occasional explosions. "What's that?" demanded the Major quickly. "That," said Nicolai soberly, as he emptied his lungs of smoke, "is the Kluchefskoi volcano talking to the peak of Suveilich" (soo-veil'-itch). "Nothing private in the conversation, I suppose," observed Dodd dryly; "he shouts it out loud enough." The reverberations continued for several minutes, but the peak of Suveilich made no response. That unfortunate mountain had recklessly expended its volcanic energies in early life, and was now left without a voice to answer the thundering shouts of its mighty comrade. There was a time when volcanoes were as numerous in Kamchatka as knights around the table of King Arthur, and the peninsula trembled to the thunder of their shoutings and midnight jollity; but one after another they had been suffocated with the fiery streams of their own eloquence, until at last Kluchefskoi was left alone, calling to its old companions throughout the silent hours of long winter nights, but hearing no response save the faint far-away echoes of its own mighty voice.