which, added to a mild, sensible, and prepossessing
countenance, gave him a most sage and respectable appearance,
and personified to my imagination the wise enchanter whose name
he bore. Conon Merlin had been educated by the famous Mr.
Evashkin, a Russian nobleman, who was banished to Kamtchatka
during the reign of Catharine II., and is since dead; but who
was well known to former travellers in Kamtchatka. Our Toyune,
therefore, could write and read Russian well, knew most of the
dialects of Kamtchatka, and was certainly the most intelligent
man I ever met among the natives."

On the morning of the 13th, soon after leaving the village of Klutchee,
they beheld the majestic volcano of Klootchefsky, rearing its awful and
flaming head far above the clouds. This huge mountain, towering to the
skies, is a perfect cone, decreasing gradually from its enormous base to
the summit; its top is whitened by perpetual snow, and the flame and
smoke, for ever issuing from its crater, are seen shading the sky at the
distance of many miles. Sometimes quantities of ashes are thrown out, so
fine as to impregnate the atmosphere, and be inhaled in breathing; and,
it is said, that occasionally a white clammy substance, resembling,
perhaps, the honey dew elsewhere observed, has flowed from the crater,
sweet to the taste, and very adhesive when touched. Altogether, this
mountain is one of the most picturesque and sublime of the volcanoes
described by travellers, though from its remote situation it has been,
and probably long will be, visited but by few.

Mr. Dobell reached Nijna Kamtchatsk on the 14th of September, and was
most kindly received and treated by the governor, General Petrowsky,
with whom he made all the arrangements he desired, and, after a visit of
six days, returned to St. Peter and St. Paul. He describes the town of
Nijna Kamtchatsk as one of eighty or ninety houses, and between four and
five hundred inhabitants. Its situation is not good, the ground being
low and moist. It is on the bank of the river Kamtchatka, about
thirty-five versts from the sea. Since the period we allude to, the
seat of government has been removed to St. Peter and St. Paul, and the
town has lost nearly all its population, there being but five or six
families left there.

On his way back he again visited his kind host, the Toyune of Sherrom,
whom he found laying in his winter stock of provisions, which off