Thence he went to the Kurile Islands and Kamchatka, and sailed from the far north down the meridian to the Navigator and Friendly Islands.
The picturesque Bureya Mountains above the Amur, the forest-clad Sikhota-alin on the Pacific, and the volcanic chains of Kamchatka belong, however, to quite another orographical construction, being the border-ridges of the terraces by which the great plateau formation descends to the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
Viewed as a whole, the flora of the forest region is to be regarded as European-Siberian; and, though certain species disappear towards the E., while new ones make their appearance, it maintains, on the whole, the same features throughout from Poland to Kamchatka.
The northern part of the Sea of Japan, which washes the Usuri region, has, besides the smaller bays of Olga and Vladimir, the beautiful Gulf of Peter the Great, on which stands Vladivostok, the Russian naval station on the Pacific. Okhotsk and Ayan on the Sea of Okhotsk, Petropavlovsk on the east shore of Kamchatka, Nikolayevsk, and Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan, and Dui on Sakhalin are the only ports of Siberia.
The island (also called Avatcha), which was the scene of his death, lies in the southwestern part of the sea, off the coast of Kamchatka, being one of the Commander or Komandor group, belonging to Russia.
