Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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Many English men-of-war have visited the interesting peninsula of Kamchatka, all included in the China station. How well the writer remembers the first time he visited Petropaulovski, the port of Peter and Paul! Entering first one of the noblest bays in the whole world—glorious Avatcha Bay—and steaming a short distance, the entrance to a capital harbour disclosed itself. In half an hour the vessel was inside a landlocked harbour, with a sand-spit protecting it from all fear of gales or sudden squalls. Behind was a highly-coloured little town, red roofs, yellow walls, and a church with burnished turrets. The hills around were autumnly frost-coloured; but not all the ideas the expression will convey to an artist could conjure up the reality. Indian yellow merging through tints of gamboge, yellow, and brown ochre to sombre brown; madder lake, brown madder, Indian red to Roman sepia; greys, bright and dull greens indefinable, and utterly indescribable, formed a mélange of colour which defied description whether by brush or pen. It was delightful; but it was puzzling. King Frost had completed at night that which autumn had done by day. Then behind rose the grand mountain of Koriatski, one of a series of great volcanoes. It seemed a few miles off; it was, although the wonderful clearness of the atmosphere belied the fact, some thirty miles distant. An impregnable fortress of rock, streaked and capped with snow, it defies time and man. Its smoke was constantly observed; its pure snows only hid the boiling, bubbling lava beneath.