e remains pretty nearly the same at all seasons,
about 48 deg. Fahrenheit. In winter it is crossed on the ice, the passage
ordinarily occupying about five hours. The lake generally freezes when
the air is perfectly still so that the surface is of glossy smoothness
until covered with snow. A gentleman in Irkutsk described to me his
feelings when he crossed Lake Baikal in winter for the first time. The
ice was six feet thick, but so perfectly transparent that he seemed
driving over the surface of the water. The illusion was complete, and
not wholly dispelled when he alighted. "Starting from the western
side, the opposite coast was not visible, and I experienced" said my
friend, "the sensation of setting out in a sleigh to cross the
Atlantic from Liverpool to New York."

In summer and in winter communication is pretty regular, but there is
a suspension of travel when the ice is forming, and another when it
breaks up. This causes serious inconvenience, and has led the
government to build a road around the southern extremity of the lake.
The mountains are lofty and precipitous, and the work is done at vast
expense. The road winds over cliffs and crags sometimes near the lake
and again two thousand feet above it. Largo numbers of peasants,
Bouriats, and prisoners have been employed there for several years,
but the route was not open for wheeled vehicles at the time I crossed
the lake.

One mode of cutting the road through the mountains was to build large
bonfires in winter when the temperature was very low. The heat caused
the rock to crack so that large masses could be removed, but the
operation was necessarily slow. The insurrection of June, 1866,
occurred on this road.

Formerly a winter station was kept on the ice half-way across the
lake. By a sudden thaw at the close of one winter the men and horses
of a station were swallowed up, and nothing was known of them until
weeks afterward, when their bodies were washed ashore. Since this
catastrophe the entire passage of the lake, about forty miles, is made
without change of horses.

We left Posolsky and enjoyed a sunset on the lake. The mountains rise
abruptly on the western and southeastern shores, and many of their
snow covered peaks were beautifully tinged by the fading sunlight. The
illusion regarding distances was difficult to overcome, and could only
be realized by observing how very slowly we neared the mountains we
were approaching. The atmosphere was of remarkab