of not less than
3000 miles. It rises in the Baikal mountains and flows north and east
past the towns of Kirensk, Vitimsk, and Olekminsk to Yakutsk, thence it
turns to the north-west and enters the Arctic Ocean, forming a wide
delta. The Lena receives several large tributaries, viz., the Vitim,
about 1400, the Olekma, about 800, and the Aldan, about 1300 miles
long.]

[Footnote 4: This must be very slow travelling, for Dobell, the
traveller, writes: "When I descended the Lena from Ust-kutsk in the
spring of 1816, I was only fourteen days going to Yakutsk in a large
flat-bottomed boat."]

Most people in England have a very vague idea of the size of Siberia. It
is only by actually visiting the country that one can grasp the
harassing difficulties due to appalling distances and primitive modes of
locomotion, especially when the traveller is bound for the Far North. I
will, therefore, endeavour to convey to the reader, as briefly as
possible, the area of this land of illimitable space, and cannot do so
better than by quoting the graphic description given by the American
explorer, Mr. George Kennan.[5] He says: "You can take the whole of the
United States of America, from Maine to California and from Lake
Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, and set it down in the middle of Siberia
without touching anywhere the boundaries of the latter's territory; you
can then take Alaska and all the countries of Europe, with the exception
of Russia, and fit them into the remaining margin like the pieces of a
dissected map. After having thus accommodated all of the United States,
including Alaska, and the whole of Europe, except Russia, you will
still have more than 300,000 miles of Siberian territory to spare. In
other words, you will still have unoccupied in Siberia an area half as
large again as the Empire of Germany." According to the census of 1897
the entire population of Siberia is little more than that of the English
metropolis.

[Footnote 5: "Siberia and the Exile System," by George Kennan.]

A couple of Yakute sleighs sufficed for ourselves and entire outfit. I
rode with de Clinchamp in the leading vehicle, while Harding and the
bulk of the stores followed in the other. At first sight, the Yakute
sleigh appears to be a clumsy but comfortable contrivance, but very few
miles had been covered before I discovered its unlimited powers of
inflicting pain. For this machine does not glide like a well-behaved
sleigh, but advances by leaps