In coming over to Bolsheretsk we brought 300 puds of whale blubber obtained from a whale cast up by the sea, which served us as money, together with the Circassian tobacco which is here commonly so used. In the southern part of Kamchatka live Kuriles, in the northern part Kamchadales, whose language is peculiarly their own with but few introduced words. Of these people some are idolaters, others believe in nothing and are strangers to all honesty. The Russians who live in Kamchatka and the indigenes grow no grain and have no domestic animals except draught dogs. They dress and subsist upon what they can get, principally fish, roots and berries, in summer time wild fowl and large marine animals. At present in the wilderness of Yakutsk, the convent, which is of the same age as the Kamchatka churches, cultivates barley, hemp and turnips. Here only turnips are grown by the people of the three settlements, but they grow very large, in Russia they are smaller, here there may be four turnips to a pud. I brought with me on my journey some rye which was sowed around the establishments near us, but whether it ripened or not I did not ascertain. The frost strikes early into the ground in this region and the absence of cattle renders it difficult for the people to plow. The natives described and from whom the yassak [tribute] is collected, belong to the Russian Empire and are all savages. They are known for their dirt and bad passions. If a woman or any animal brings forth twins then one of them is smothered, the hour it is born, and it is regarded as a great fault if one does not smother one of the two. The Kamchadales are very superstitious. If there is any one who is very ill, even a father or mother, or near the point of death, they will carry them out into the woods and leave them without nourishment for a week together whether it be winter or summer, from which treatment many die. The dead are not covered with earth but are dragged out and left to be eaten by dogs. The house of a man who has died is abandoned. Among the Kariak people it is the custom to burn the body, although this is forbidden. By the time of our arrival at the Lower Kamchatka post the ship-timber for our vessel was in large part prepared, and upon the 4th of April, 1728, was put upon the stocks for the vessel, which, with God's help, was finished by the 10th of July, the timber being hauled by dogs. Tar was made from the native tree which is called _Listvennik_ [spruce], since the tar which we should have brought with us had not arrived.