A trade of barter is carried on between Matmai and the islands last mentioned; and between those again and the Kuriles to the northward; in which, for furs, dried fish, and oil, the latter get silk, cotton, iron, and Japanese articles of furniture.[89]
The inhabitants of as many of the islands as are brought under the Russian dominion, are at present converted to Christianity. And probably the time is not very distant, when a friendly and profitable intercourse will be brought about between Kamtschatka and the whole of this chain of islands; and which will draw after it a communication with Japan itself. This may eventually be greatly facilitated by a circumstance related to me by Major Behm, that several Russians, who had been taught the Japanese language, by two men belonging to a vessel of that nation, which had been shipwrecked[90] on the coast of Kamtschatka, had been sent among those islands.
The advantages that would accrue to the Russians by an immediate trade to Japan, have been already adverted to, and are too many, and too obvious, to need insisting upon.[91]
The Koreki country includes two distinct nations, called the Wandering and Fixed Koriacs.
The former inhabit the northern part of the isthmus of Kamtschatka, and the whole coast of the eastern ocean; from thence to the Anadir.
The country of the Wandering Koriacks stretches along the north-east of the sea of Okotzk to the river Penskina, and westward toward the river Kovyma.
The Fixed Koriacks have a strong resemblance to the Kamtschadales; and, like them, depend altogether on fishing for subsistence. Their dress and habitations are of the same kind. They are tributary to the Russians, and under the district of the Ingiga.
The Wandering Koriacs occupy themselves entirely in breeding and pasturing deer, of which they are said to possess immense numbers; and that it is no unusual thing for an individual chief to have a herd of four or five thousand. They despise fish, and live entirely on deer. They have no balagans; and their only habitations are like the Kamtschadale jourts, with this difference, that they are covered with raw deer-skins in winter, and tanned ones in summer. Their sledges are drawn by deer, and never by dogs; which, like the latter, are likewise always spayed, in order to be trained to this business. The draft-deer pasture in company with the others; and when they are wanted, the huntsmen make use of a certain cry, which they instantly obey, by coming out of the herd.