ed as
alternately binding them in strict allegiance to each other
during the rest of their lives. There are also two rings used,
which are exchanged, from the man to the woman, during the
ceremony. The whole party now returned to the house of the
bridegroom's father, where a repast was prepared for them,
resembling all large entertainments of this sort. The healths
of the principal persons of the place were drunk, and followed
by a salute of three guns after each toast. The evening was
crowned with an illumination, and a ball, at which, as a
stranger, I had the honour of leading off the bride."

At Yakutsk Mr. Dobell embarked in a large covered boat on the Lena,
which he ascended on his way to Irkutsk. He left the former place on the
29th of August, being drawn by horses, with the assistance of six
peasants, whom he hired to go fifteen hundred versts to Kiringee, and
who were employed at places where it was difficult for the horses. The
banks of the river were varied and picturesque; sometimes steep cliffs
and uncouth heaps of rock, in the most fantastic shapes, rose to a great
height; sometimes the shores sloped away into mountains covered with
thick forests of pine and spruce.

On the 5th of October he arrived at Olekma, a town six hundred versts
above Yakutsk, in latitude 60 deg. 22', and east longitude 89 deg. 15' from St.
Petersburg. He found it to contain four or five hundred inhabitants. It
was, in former times, the place whence the Cossacks set out, when they
waged their wars against the Chinese, and carried their depredations as
far as the Amour. It is said, that three hundred and fifty of these
barbarian warriors were once besieged in a fortress by twenty-two
thousand Chinese, and held out against them a whole year, until a
capitulation was agreed upon, at a period when their force was reduced
to one hundred and fifty men.

At Olekma, the season had become so cold, and there was so much floating
ice in the Lena, as to render it impossible to proceed any longer by
water. The road lay along the shores of the river, frequently obstructed
by half frozen torrents rushing into it, and occasionally cut off by
points and precipices which compelled the party to venture on the ice.

"At Matcha, I found a clean, comfortable dwelling, and a
hospitable reception from the hostess, an old woman, who said
she had been seventeen years in Siberia, having been