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10 AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENT "And it is possible to cultivate grain in the Kamchatkan and Kurilian lands, because the places are warm and the lands are black and soft, but there are no cattle on them, and the natives, who know nothing about sowing, do not cultivate them." Vladimir Atlasov, 1697, in N. Ogloblin, "Dve 'skaski' VI. Atlasova," p. 17. The introduction of agriculture On the Okhotsk Seaboard and the Kamchatka Peninsula, then, was prompted by the extraordinary difficulties of overland-oversea provisionment. The "Kamchatka delivery" was more problematical than the "Okhotsk delivery," although the quantity and the variety of fish were greater in the peninsula than on the seaboard.1 According to Devier, Commandant of Okhotsk, in 1740 grain cost 4 to 5 rubles per pud in Kamchatka and 3 rubles per pud at Okhotsk.2 In the early 1740's rye flour and cow's butter, bought at Irkutsk and Yakutsk, respectively, for 25 kopeks and for 1 ruble, 20 kopeks per pud, cost 4 to 8 rubles and 6 to 8 rubJes per pud in Kamchatka, where at the same time imported grain cost twice as much as at Okhotsk.3 Muller noted in 1737 that "provisions are rarely imported for sale in Kamchatka."4 Bread, the Russian staff of life, was then so scarce in Kamchatka that it was eaten only on holidays-although there were not a few holidays on the Russian religious calendar. And there was no fresh meat in the peninsula, except tame reindeer and wild game, while many Yakut cattle were driven to Okhotsk annually.5 Agriculture thus was more necessary in Kamchatka than at Okhotsk. It is not surprising that agricultural experiments were concentrated in the peninsula, whose interior, moreover , was physically more suitable for agriculture than the Okhotsk Seaboard. Monastic Settlement Probably the first attempts at agriculture in the region were made in the early eighteenth century along the lower Kamchatka River 160 AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENT 161 by the lay brothers of Uspenskaya Hermitage, which was founded in 1717-196 by the monk Ignaty Kozyrevsky "on a site suitable for the cultivation of vegetables and for the sowing of grain...."'* Established under the auspices of Yakutsk's Spassky Monastery (1663), one of the most active centers of agriculture in the basin of the middle Lena River, Uspenskaya Hermitage was located on the right bank of the lower Kamchatka River at the mouth of the Klyuchevka, less than a mile and a half below old Nizhne-Kamchatsk. In 1718 grain and vegetable seeds were sent from Yakutsk to Kamchatka at the request of Ignaty, who had reported from the peninsula that land was sufficient and that grain would grow.8 Krasheninnikov recorded that "monastic servitors came there at the time for the plowing of the land under barley and other garden vegetables. For at that place barley grows passably and turnips prolifically."9 In 1724 the hermitage planted a dozen bushels of rye, which yielded well.10 Three years later Bering found that "barley, hemp, radish grow at the hermitage of Yakutsk Monastery which is a versta from the Kamchatka church: and turnips are grown by many 'serving men' at all three ostrogs [Bolsheretsk, Verkhne-Kamchatsk, and Nizhne-Kamchatsk]...."11 Allegedly nine-pound turnips were grown.12 Bering also observed that the plowland at the hermitage, for want of livestock, was "without manure" and was plowed "with men";13 in other words, natives were hitched to plows. Bering's party planted rye and oats at the hermitage, "but whether or not they ripened is unknown. • • •"14 In 1728 Brother Iakov successfully grew oats, barley, and vegetables.15 Uspenskaya Hermitage was destroyed in 1731 along with old Nizhne-Kamchatsk during the "great rebellion" of the Kamchadals, but it was soon rebuilt. In 1737 Muller reported that at the hermitage "they boast about their arable land above everything else . . . ," that "they plow with horses, oxen, and local serfs ... ," that "a little rye is grown from year to year ... ," and that garden vegetables grow "passably," with turnips reaching the size of a man's head.16 Around 1740 Krasheninnikov observed that "the servitors of Yakutsk-Spassky Monastery, who have lived on the Kamchatka [River] for many years, sow 7 to 8 puds [5~ to 6 bushels] of barley, and from that they have so much benefit that they not only supply themselves with groats and flour but * However, another source contends that the hermitage was founded in 1715 (Anonymous, "Materialy dlya istorii Kamchatskavo kraya" ["Materials for...

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