Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/152

 *lows it sometimes for several days unintermittingly, until the poor animal, quite tired, takes refuge in some tall tree, for it can climb like a cat. The hunter then spreads his net round the tree, and kindles a fire, when the sable, unable to endure the smoke, immediately descends, and is caught in the net. These hunters, when hard pressed by hunger, have recourse to a practice analogous to that of many South Sea islanders under similar circumstances: taking two thin pieces of board, they place one on the pit of the stomach, the other on the back, and gradually drawing together the extremities, allay in some degree the cravings of appetite. The winters here are long, and the cold so intense that the earth never thaws, even in summer, beyond two feet and a half below the surface. When they dig to the depth of three feet for the purpose of burying their dead, they find the earth frozen; and in these graves the bodies remain unconsumed, and will do so, says the traveller, to the day of judgment.

On the 17th of March, the weather, as they began to approach the Baikal lake, changed so suddenly from winter to spring that they almost imagined themselves dropped imperceptibly into another climate. They therefore abandoned their sledges, which, as the snow was gone, were now become useless, and proceeded on horseback. Next day they arrived at Irkutsk on the river Angara. Here they remained until the 15th of May, waiting for the melting of the ice on the lake; and amusing themselves in the meanwhile with hunting, and observing the country and its inhabitants.

When the season was thought to be sufficiently far advanced, they proceeded up the banks of the river, until they discovered the lake bursting out between two high rocks, and tumbling down over enormous stones which lie quite across the channel of the river, which is here a mile in breadth. The sublimity of the scene, which is magnificent beyond