Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/81

Rh rate of 12 or 15 miles an hour. Steamers ply back and forth between the city and the lake, but they are six or eight hours in struggling up-stream, while they come down in about two. At the outlet, where the current is swiftest, the river never entirely freezes over, and it does not close opposite Irkútsk until some time in January, although the thermometer frequently goes to forty degrees below zero in December. The Angará is in all respects a peculiar and original river. Instead of coming into existence as a brook, it is born a mile wide with a current like a mill-race. Although its water, even in the hottest midsummer weather, is icy cold, it is the very last river in Siberia to freeze. It chills the adventurous bather to the bone in August, and then in the coldest weather of December steams as if it were boiling. Finally, it overflows its banks, not in the spring, when other rivers overflow theirs, but in early winter, when all other streams are locked in ice.

We reached the coast of Lake Baikál, at the village of Lístvinichnaya, about nine o'clock Thursday evening. A raw, chilly wind, laden with moisture, was blowing off the water, and the cell-like room to which we were shown in the small log hotel opposite the steamer-landing was so cold that as soon as possible we went to bed in our caps, boots, and heavy sheepskin overcoats. The words "went to bed" are, of course, to be understood figuratively. As a matter of fact, we simply lay down on the floor. We did not see a civilized bed in the Trans-Baikál, and I slept in all my clothing more than three-fourths of the time from the 1st of October to the 20th of March.

The steamer did not sail Friday until noon, and we therefore had ample time to study and sketch the lake port of Lístvinichnaya. It was a small village of perhaps a hundred insignificant log houses, scattered thinly along a single street, which extended for a mile or two up and down the lake between a range of high wooded hills and the water. The only harbor that the place could boast was a small