The officer, in whose house we were at present entertained, was a serjeant, and the commander of the ostrog. Nothing could exceed the kindness and hospitality of his behaviour, after he recovered from the alarm occasioned by our arrival. We found the house insufferably hot, but exceedingly neat and clean. After I had changed my clothes, which the serjeant's civility enabled me to do, by furnishing me with a complete suit of his own, we were invited to sit down to dinner, which I have no doubt was the best he could procure; and, considering the shortness of time he had to provide it, was managed with some ingenuity. As there was not time to prepare soup and bouilli, we had in their stead some cold beef, sliced, with hot water poured over it. We had next a large bird roasted, of a species with which I was unacquainted, but of a very excellent taste. After having eaten a part of this, it was taken off, and we were served with fish dressed two different ways; and soon after the bird again made its appearance, in savory and sweet pates. Our liquor, of which I shall have to speak hereafter, was of the kind called by the Russians quass, and was much the worst part of the entertainment. The serjeant's wife brought in several of the dishes herself, and was not permitted to sit down at table. Having finished our repast, during which it is hardly necessary to remark, that our conversation was confined to a few bows, and other signs of mutual respect, we endeavoured to open to our host the cause and objects of our visit to this port. As Ismyloff had probably written to them on the same subject, in the letters we had before delivered, he appeared very readily to conceive our meaning; but as there was unfortunately no one in the place that could talk any other language except Russian or Kamtschadale, we found the utmost difficulty in comprehending the information he meant to convey to us. After some time spent in these endeavours to understand one another, we conceived the sum of the intelligence we had procured to be, that though no supply, either of provisions or naval stores, was to be had at this place, yet that these articles were in great plenty at Bolcheretsk; that the commander would most probably be very willing to give us what we wanted; but that till the serjeant had received orders from him, neither he nor his people, nor the natives, could even venture to go on board the ship.
It was now time for us to take our leave; and, as my clothes were still too wet to put on, I was obliged to have recourse again to the serjeant's benevolence, for his leave to carry those I had borrowed of him on board. This request was complied with very cheerfully; and a sledge, drawn by five dogs, with a driver, was immediately provided for each of our party. The sailors were highly delighted with this mode of conveyance; and what diverted them still more was, that the two boat-hooks had also a sledge appropriated to themselves. These sledges are so light, and their construction so well adapted to the purposes for which they are intended, that they went with great expedition, and perfect safety, over the ice, which it would have been, impossible for us, with all our caution, to have passed on foot.
On our return, we found the boats towing the ship toward the village; and at seven we got close to the ice, and moored with the small bower to the N.E., and best bower to the S.W.; the entrance of the bay bearing S. by E., and S. 3/4 E.; and the ostrog N., 1/4 E., distant one mile and a half. The next morning the casks and cables were got upon the quarter-deck, in order to lighten the ship forward; and the carpenters were set to work to stop the leak, which had given us so much trouble daring our last run. It was found to have been occasioned by the falling of some sheathing from the larboard-bow, and the oakum between the planks having been washed out. The warm weather we had in the middle of the day, began to make the ice break away very fast, which, drifting with the tide, had almost filled up the entrance of the bay. Several of our gentlemen paid their visits to the serjeant, by whom they were received with great civility; and Captain Clerke sent him two bottles of rum, which he understood would be the most acceptable present he could make him, and received in return some fine fowls of the grouse kind, and twenty trouts. Our sportsmen met with but bad success; for though the bay swarmed with flocks of ducks of various kinds, and Greenland pigeons, yet they were so shy that they could not come within shot of them.
In the morning of the 1st of May, seeing the Discovery standing into the bay, a boat was immediately sent to her assistance; and in the afternoon she moored close by us. They told us, that after the weather cleared up on the 28th, they found themselves to leeward of the bay; and that when they got abreast of it the following day, and saw the entrance choked up with ice, they stood off, after firing guns, concluding we could not be here; but finding afterward it was only loose drift ice, they had ventured in. The next day the weather was so very unsettled, attended with heavy showers of snow, that the carpenters were not able to proceed in their work. The thermometer stood at 28° in the evening, and the frost was exceedingly severe in the night.
The following morning, on our observing two sledges drive into the village, Captain Clerke sent me on shore, to enquire whether any message was arrived from the commander of Kamtschatka, which, according to the serjeant's account, might now be expected, in consequence of the intelligence that had been sent of our arrival. Bolcheretsk, by the usual route, is about one hundred and thirty-five English miles from Saint Peter and Saint Paul's. Our dispatches were sent off in a sledge drawn by dogs, on the 29th, about noon. And the answer arrived, as we afterward found, early this morning; so that they were only a little more than three days and a half in performing a journey of two hundred and seventy miles.
The return of the commander's answer was, however, concealed from us for the present; and I was told, on my arrival at the serjeant's, that we should hear from him the next day. Whilst I was on shore, the boat which had brought me, together with another belonging to the Discovery, were set fast in the ice, which a southerly wind had driven from the other side of the bay. On seeing them entangled, the Discovery's launch had been sent to their assistance, but shared the same fate; and in a short time the ice had surrounded them near a quarter of a mile deep. This obliged us to stay on shore till evening, when, finding no prospect of getting the boats off, some of us went in sledges to the edge of the ice, and were taken off by boats sent from the ship, and the rest staid on shore all night.
It continued to freeze hard during the night; but before morning, on the 4th, a change of wind drifted away the floating ice, and set the boats at liberty, without their having sustained the smallest damage.
About ten o'clock in the forenoon, we saw several sledges driving down to the edge of the ice, and sent a boat to conduct the persons who were in them on board. One of these was a Russian merchant, from Bolcheretsk, named Fedositch, and the other a German, called Port, who had brought a letter from Major Behm, the commander of Kamtschatka, to Captain Clerke. When they got to the edge of the ice, and saw distinctly the size of the ships, which lay within about two hundred yards from them, they appeared to be exceedingly alarmed; and, before they would venture to embark, desired two of our boat's crew might be left on shore as hostages for their safety. We afterward found, that Ismyloff, in his letter to the commander, had misrepresented us, for what reasons we could not conceive, as two small trading boats; and that the serjeant, who had only seen the ships at a distance, had not in his dispatches rectified the mistake.
When they arrived on board, we still found, from their cautious and timorous behaviour, that they were under some unaccountable apprehensions; and an uncommon degree of satisfaction was visible in their countenances, on the German's finding a person amongst us with whom he could converse. This was Mr Webber, who spoke that language perfectly well; and at last, though with some difficulty, convinced them that we were Englishmen and friends. Mr Port, being introduced to Captain Clerke, delivered to him the commander's letter, which was written in German, and was merely complimental, inviting him and his officers to Bolcheretsk, to which place the people who brought it were to conduct us. Mr Port, at the same time acquainted him, that the major had conceived a very wrong idea of the size of the ships, and of the service we were engaged in; Ismyloff, in his letter, having represented us as two small English packet boats, and cautioned him to be on his guard; insinuating, that he suspected us to be no better than pirates. In consequence of this letter, he said there had been various conjectures formed about us at Bolcheretsk; that the major thought it most probable we were on a trading scheme, and for that reason had sent down a merchant to us; but that the officer, who was second in command, was of opinion we were French, and come with some hostile intention, and was for taking measures accordingly. It had required, he added, all the major's authority to keep the inhabitants from leaving the town, and retiring up into the country, to so extraordinary a pitch had their fears risen from their persuasion that we were French.
Their extreme apprehensions of that nation were principally occasioned by some circumstances attending an insurrection that had happened at Bolcheretsk, a few years before, in which the commander had lost his life. We were informed, that an exiled Polish officer, named Beniowski, taking advantage of the confusion into which the town was thrown, had seized upon a galliot, then lying at the entrance of the Bolchoireka, and had forced on board a number of Russian sailors, sufficient to navigate her; that he had put on shore a part of the crew at the Kourile Islands, and among the rest, Ismyloff, who, as the reader will recollect, had puzzled us exceedingly at Oonalashka, with the history of this transaction; though, for want of understanding his language, we could not often make out all the circumstances attending it; that he passed in sight of Japan; made Luconia; and was there directed how to steer to Canton; that arriving there, he had applied to the French, and had got a passage in one of their India ships to France; and that most of the Russians had likewise returned to Europe in French ships, and had afterward found their way to Petersburg. We met with three of Beniowski's crew in the harbour of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; and from them we learnt the circumstances of the above story.