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.
Their clothing is the same. The outer garment, which is called parque, is like a waggoner's frock, and is made of the skins of deer, or other animals, tanned on one side. They wear under this long breeches of similar leather, and next the skin a very short and tight shirt, either of nankin or cotton stuff; the women's are of silk, which is a luxury among them. Both sexes wear boots; in summer, of goats or dogs skins tanned; and in winter, of the skins of sea wolves, or the legs of rein deer[36]. The men constantly wear fur caps; in the mild season they put on longer shirts of nankin, or of skin without hair; they are made like the parque, and answer the same purpose, that is, to be worn over their other garments. Their gala dress, is a parque trimmed with otter skins and velvet, or other stuffs and furs equally dear. The women are clothed like the Russian women, whose mode of dress is too well known to need a description; I shall therefore only observe, that the excessive scarcity of every species of stuff at Kamtschatka, renders the toilet of the women an object of very considerable expence: they sometimes adopt the dress of the men.
The principal food of these people consists, as I have already observed, in dried fish. The fish are procured by the men, while the women are employed in domestic occupations, or in gathering fruits and other vegetables, which, next to the dried fish, are the favourite provisions of the Kamtschadales and Russians of this country. When the women go out to make these harvests for winter consumption, it is high holy-day with them, and the anniversary is celebrated by a riotous and intemperate joy, that frequently gives rise to the most extravagant and indecent scenes. They disperse in crowds through the country, singing and giving themselves up to all the absurdities which their imagination suggests; no consideration of fear or modesty restrains them. I cannot better describe their licentious frenzy than by comparing it with the bacchanals of the Pagans. Ill betide the man whom chance conducts and delivers into their hands! however resolute or however active he may be, it is impossible to evade the fate that awaits him; and it is seldom that he escapes, without receiving a severe flagellation.
Their provisions are prepared nearly in the following manner; it will appear, from the recital, that they cannot be accused of much delicacy. They are particularly careful to waste no part of the fish. As soon as it is caught they tear out the gills, which they immediately suck with extreme gratification. By another refinement of sensuality or gluttony, they cut off also at the same time some slices of the fish, which they devour with equal avidity, covered as they are with clots of blood. The fish is then gutted, and the entrails reserved for their dogs. The rest is prepared and dried; when they eat it either boiled, roasted, or broiled, but most commonly raw.
The food which the epicures esteem most, and which appeared to me to be singularly disgusting, is a species of salmon, called tchaouitcha. As soon as it is caught, they bury it in a hole; and in this kind of larder they leave it till it has had time to sour, or, properly speaking, become perfectly putrified. It is only in this state of corruption that it attains the flavour most pleasing to the delicate palates of these people. In my opinion the infectious odour that exhales from this fish, would suffice to repulse the most hungry being; and yet a Kamtschadale feeds voluptuously upon this rotten flesh. How fortunate does he consider himself when the head falls to his lot! this is deemed the most delicious morsel, and is commonly distributed into many parts. I frequently wished to overcome my aversion, and taste this so highly valued food; but my resolution was unequal to it; and I was not only unable to taste it, but even to bring it near my mouth; every time I attempted, the fetid exhalation which it emitted gave me a nausea, and disgusted me insuperably.