Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/362

356 "nor anybody who looked like one. There were plenty of laborers employed in handling the tea and other merchandise, but they all appeared to be well cared for. Outside the town there was quite a camp of Mongolians with their camel-trains, which are employed in the transportation of goods across the great desert of Gobi.

"The Sargootchay invited me to dinner, and I went there with the Governor of Kiachta and some of his officers. The Sargootchay was polite, and we tried to talk, but had a good deal of difficulty in doing so on account of the numerous translations.

"What I thought in my own language I said in French to one of my Russian friends. He spoke in Russian to his Russian-Mongol interpreter, who spoke in Mongol to the Mongol-Chinese interpreter of the Sargootchay. Remarks and responses thus had to pass through four tongues to reach their destination.

"The dinner was probably like what you had at Peking or Canton, and so I will not take the time to describe it. After dinner we went to the theatre, where we sat under a canopy and witnessed a performance which included, among other things, a procession of fictitious wild beasts. That they were very fictitious was shown by the accident of the tiger's mask falling off and revealing the head of an astonished man.

"The thermometer was below the freezing-point, and as the theatre was in the open air, I was very glad that the performance was short.

"From Kiachta I returned to Verckne Udinsk, and then proceeded to Irkutsk by way of Lake Baikal. This lake is said to be the largest body of fresh water in Asia. It is four hundred miles long by about fifty broad, and is fourteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. The quantity of water flowing into it is said to be ten times as much as passes from it by its outlet, the Angara River. What becomes of the other nine-tenths is a mystery that has puzzled many scientific men; none of them have been able to establish a theory which the others have not completely upset.

"I crossed the lake in a steamboat, and during the voyage listened eagerly to the description of the winter passage which is made on the ice.