Kluchefskoi
volcano, the monarch of Siberian mountains, whose sharp summit, with
its motionless streamer of golden smoke, can be seen anywhere within a
radius of a hundred miles. All other neighbouring beauties of scenery
are merely tributary to this, and are valued only according to their
capability of relieving and setting forth this magnificent peak, whose
colossal dimensions rise in one unbroken sweep of snow from the grassy
valleys of the Kamchatka and Yolofka, which terminate at its base.
"Heir of the sunset and herald of morning," its lofty crater is
suffused with a roseate blush long before the morning mists and
darkness are out of the valleys, and long after the sun has set behind
the purple mountains of Tigil. At all times, under all circumstances,
and in all its ever-varying moods, it is the most beautiful mountain I
have ever seen. Now it lies bathed in the warm sunshine of an Indian
summer's day, with a few fleecy clouds resting at the snow-line and
dappling its sides with purple shadows; then it envelops itself in
dense volumes of black volcanic smoke, and thunders out a hoarse
warning to the villages at its feet; and finally, toward evening, it
gathers a mantle of grey mists around its summit, and rolls them
in convulsed masses down its sides, until it stands in the clear
atmosphere a colossal pillar of cloud, sixteen thousand feet in
height, resting upon fifty square miles of shaggy pine forest.

You think nothing can be more beautiful than the delicate tender
colour, like that of a wild-rose leaf, which tinges its snows as the
sun sinks in a swirl of red vapours in the west; but "visit it by the
pale moonlight," when its hood of mist is edged with silver, when
black shadows gather in its deep ravines and white misty lights gleam
from its snowy pinnacles, when the host of starry constellations seems
to circle around its lofty peak, and the tangled silver chain of the
Pleiades to hang upon one of its rocky spires--then say, if you can,
that it is more beautiful by daylight.

We entered the Yolofka about noon. This river empties into the
Kamchatka from the north, twelve versts above Kluchei. Its shores are
generally low and marshy, and thickly overgrown with rushes and reedy
grass, which furnish cover for thousands of ducks, geese, and wild
swans. We reached, before night, a native village called Harchina
(har'-chin-ah) and sent at once for a celebrated Russian guide by the
name of Nicolai Bragan (nick-o