De Lesseps opens this volume with a departure from Poustaretsk, immediately confronting physical hardship: he commits an imprudence that injures his health, later cured by exercise. The narrative is punctuated by storms, a tempest, and a terrible hurricane, yet the author also pauses to describe the dress, features, and customs of the Koriacs and Toungouses he meets. A notable episode involves a Koriac chief who tries to detain him, and later a conversation with the chief of seven Tchouktchis. The text balances personal peril with ethnographic observation, as when de Lesseps surprises his people by using a compass.

Commerce and Conquest in the Fur Trade

De Lesseps devotes a substantial digression to the Russian fur trade, which he investigates at Okotsk by consulting merchants and comparing accounts with Coxe. He describes how the Russians, after conquering eastern Siberia, turned from mining precious metals to exploiting the furs of indigenous peoples. The author notes that as they moved east, furs became more beautiful, driving further expansion. He characterizes the early Russian presence as a "theatre of the piracies of a herd of Cossacs and Tartars," and observes that the "ingenious avarice" of the emigrants led them to trade for furs rather than plunder. This section reveals the economic motives behind the journeys he undertakes.

Perilous Travel and the Limits of Control

The journey is marked by constant danger: de Lesseps nearly loses his life when acting as his own charioteer, and his party is forced to pass over a cornice of ice adhering to a rock. The ice breaking up creates perplexities, and they take shelter in a deserted yourt during a tempest. The author's health suffers repeatedly, and he notes the superstition of his soldiers, who are alarmed by a Koriac chief's attempt to detain him. A contest with his people over the weather reveals his use of a compass to surprise them. These episodes underscore the fragility of the traveler's control over his environment and companions.

Encounters with Indigenous Peoples

De Lesseps describes several indigenous groups: the fixed Koriacs, their "inflexible courage," mode of life, food, drink, marriages, funerals, and religion; the wandering Koriacs, with their yourts and flocks of reindeer; and the Toungouses, noting the coquetry of their women and their features and character. He records a conversation with a Tchouktchi chief, and an account of two women who accosted him. A Koriac prince named Oumiavin appears, and later prince Amoulamoula visits and gives a present. These encounters are rendered with specific detail, such as the cradle in which women carry their children, and the idiom of the Koriacs.

Readers should attend to the interplay between de Lesseps's personal narrative—his illnesses, anxieties, and moments of deception—and the broader ethnographic and commercial observations he interweaves. The volume is as much a record of the author's physical and psychological endurance as it is a document of late-eighteenth-century Russian expansion and indigenous life in Kamchatka.