KAMCHATKA, or Kamtchatka, a peninsular portion of eastern Siberia, Russia, stretching south between the Sea of Okhotsk on the west and Behring’s Sea on the east, and finding its physical continuation first in the Kurile Islands (of which Shunshu is only 7 miles distant from the terminal Cape Lopatka) and then in the larger islands of the empire of Japan. The area is estimated at 237,266 square miles. The range of mountains which forms the backbone of the peninsula opens up towards the middle into two distinct branches, and gives the whole the general outline of an oval leaf. The western branch is the higher of the two. Southwards from 57° N. lat. there are no fewer than twelve active and twenty-six extinct craters,—all, however, except five on the eastern side of the peninsula. The active volcanoes are as follows :—Klyutchevskaya Sopka (15,040 feet in height), Shevelyutch (9898 feet), Bolshaya {i,e., the Great) Tolbatcha (7800 feet), Kizimen, Uzon, Kishpinitch, the Great and the Little Semetchik, Zhupanova Sopka (8496 feet), Avatchinskaya (8360 feet), Asatcha, and Tchaokhtch. The eruptions of Klyutchevskaya are not unworthy of being compared with those of Mount Etna; the most notable chronicled by European observers are those of 1727-1731 (lasting four years), 1737, and 1854. More than twenty hot springs are known. The basis rocks are granite and porphyry, with metamorphic schists, basalts, trachytes, and other volcanic rocks. The sedimentary rocks are mainly of Tertiary and more particularly Eocene origin; those of the Quaternary period have a limited area. Native copper, magnetic iron, lignite, amber, mica, and sulphur are the chief minerals. Of the rivers the largest bears the same name as the peninsula; rising in the highest part of the central range, it ...