The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Volume 3

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1835 edition. Excerpt: ...and many of them white as snow. They pass the winter there, and live on dry grass and saline plants. Their flesh and milk are eaten, and their skins afford excellent bags for liquid matters; they are also used, in some difficult parts, in the mailcoaches like horses, especially on the road to Nertshinsk. The Burates possess numerous herds, principally on the eastern side of the lake, where one person has sometimes 1000 camels, 4000 horses, 8000 sheep, from 2000 to 3000 head of black cattle, together with a small number of goats. The Tunguses generally have only herds of reindeer, which are of a white colour, rarely spotted, but never grey, while those which live in the neighbouring woods in a wild state are always of an ash-grey colour. The commerce which the Russians carry on with the Chinese is considerably facilitated by this lake. The Russian goods, for which the town of Irkutsk, on the banks of the Lower Angara, forty miles from the lake, is the principal depot, are carried thence to Kiachta in summer by small vessels and large barges, and in winter by sledges. The vessels are drawn from Irkutsk to the place where this river issues from the lake, and thence they sail over the lake to the mouth of the Selinga. They then ascend this river to Wershnei, Udinsk, or even to Selinginok, but rarely higher. Thence the goods are carried by land to Kiachta, a distance of about sixteen miles. The navigation on the lake lasts only from May to the month of November, when the masses of ice render it dangerous. From the month of January to the end of April the goods are carried on sledges, and the great smoothness of the ice of the lake considerably abridges the time necessary for taking them from one place to the other. Without the facility which...