I shall terminate the article of commerce by adding, that the persons who deal most in wholesale, are merely agents of the merchants of Totma, Vologda, Grand Ustiug, and different towns of Siberia, or the factors of other opulent traders, who extend even to this distant country their commercial speculations. All the wares and provisions, which necessity obliges them to purchase from the magazines, are sold excessively dear, and at about ten times the current price at Moscow. A _vedro_[33] of French brandy costs eighty roubles[34]. The merchants are allowed to traffic in this article; but the brandy, distilled from corn, which is brought from Okotsk, and that produced by the country, which is distilled from the _slatkaïa-trava_, or sweet herb, are sold, upon government account, at forty one roubles ninety-six kopecks[35] the vedro. They can be sold only in the _kabacs_, or public houses, opened for that purpose. At Okotsk, the price of brandy distilled from corn is no more than eighteen roubles the vedro; so that the expence of freight is charged at twenty-three roubles ninety-six kopecks, which appears exorbitant, and enables us to form some judgment of the accruing profit. The rest of the merchandize consists of nankins and other China stuffs, together with various commodities of Russian and foreign manufacture, as ribands, handkerchiefs, stockings, caps, shoes, boots, and other articles of European dress, which may be regarded as luxuries, compared with the extreme simplicity of apparel of the Kamtschadales. Among the provision imported, there are sugar, tea, a small quantity of coffee, some wine, but very little, biscuits, confections, or dried fruits, as prunes, raisins, &c. and lastly, candles, both wax and tallow, powder, shot, &c. The scarcity of all these articles in so distant a country, and the need, whether natural or artificial, which there is for them, enable the merchants to sell them at whatever exorbitant price their voracity may affix. In common, they are disposed of almost immediately upon their arrival. The merchants keep shops, each of them occupying one of the huts opposite the guard-house; these shops are open every day, except feast days. The inhabitants of Bolcheretsk differ not from the Kamtschadales in their mode of living; they are less satisfied, however, with balagans, and their houses are a little cleaner.