We were about six or seven hours in going from Paratounka to Koriaki, which, as far as I could judge, is from thirty-eight to forty wersts. Scarcely arrived, we were obliged to take refuge in the house of the _toyon_, to shelter ourselves from the rain; he ceded his isba to M. Kasloff, and we spent the night there. The ostrog of Koriaki is situated in the midst of a coppice wood, and upon the border of the river Avatscha, which becomes very narrow in this part. Five or six isbas, and twice, or at most three times the number of balagans, make up this village, which is similar to that of Paratounka, except that it is less, and has no parish church. I observed in general that ostrogs of so little consideration were not provided with a church. The next day we mounted our horses and took the way to Natchikin, another ostrog in the Bolcheretsk route. We were to stop a few days in the neighbourhood for the sake of the baths, which M. Kasloff had constructed at his own expence, for the benefit and pleasure of the inhabitants, upon the hots springs that are found there, and which I shall presently describe. The way from Koriaki to Natchikin is tolerably commodious, and we crossed without difficulty all the little streams that fall from the mountains, at the foot of which we passed. About three-fourths of the way we met the Bolchaïa-reka[23]; from the site of its greatest breadth, which in this place is about ten or twelve yards, it appears to wind to a considerable extent to the north east; we journeyed on its bank for some time, till we came to a little mountain, which we were obliged to pass over in order to reach the village. A heavy rain which came on as we left Koriaki, ceased a few minutes after; but the wind having changed to the north-west, the heavens became obscured, and we had abundance of snow; we were about two-thirds of our way, and it continued till our arrival. I remarked that the snow already covered the mountains, even such as were lowest, upon which it described an equal line at a certain elevation, but that below them no traces of it were yet perceptible. We forded the Bolchaïa-reka, and found on the other side the ostrog of Natchikin, where I counted six or seven isbas and twenty balagans, similar to what I had seen before. We made no stay there, M. Kasloff thinking it proper to hasten immediately to the baths, to which I was inclined as much from curiosity as from necessity.