Awatska bay is a spacious basin, 25 or 30 miles in circumference; any part of it would afford safe anchorage, but it has three very fine harbours. That of St. Peter and St. Paul, where we lay, is sheltered from every wind by a projecting woody point; but, owing to the great height of the mountains is subject to heavy squalls.
The entrance to the bay is not above a mile and a half wide, and may be known by several remarkable rocks on the starboard hand going in, somewhat like the needles at the Isle of Wight.
We remained at St. Peter and St. Paul thirty-three days, and discharged nearly one third of our cargo.
The town, although the principal sea-port of the Peninsula of Kamschatka, is nothing more than a miserable village, containing 300 or 400 inhabitants, of whom about two-thirds are Russians and the remainder natives. It is situated on an eminence above the harbour, and, with the exception of the governor’s house, consists of huts of one story high, built of logs and covered with thatch. In a few of them the windows are glazed with talc, but more generally the intestine of the seal supplies the place of glass.
The huts of the natives lie below the town towards the shore. They are almost wholly under ground, nothing but the roof being seen, which is long and rounded at the top, resembling a vessel with the bottom upwards.
On a rising ground on the north side of the harbour, near the governor’s house, stands an obelisk, erected to the memory of Captain Clerke, the coadjutor of Captain Cook, who died at sea, and was buried at this place. The monument is about sixteen or eighteen feet high, built of hewn stone, with a ship on the top; there were inscriptions on each side, which were much defaced by the weather; and owing to the rail which surrounded the place, we could not get near enough to ascertain in what language they were written.[9]
The natives are stout made, round-faced, with a yellowish complexion. The men are dressed in skin frocks; the women in a similar dress made of nankeen.
The country round is perfectly barren, and no cultivation of any kind is to be seen, except one or two gardens near the town.
They have a few horses and horned cattle; but these are so scarce, that the fresh beef we required was brought from Boltcheresk, a distance of seventy miles.