From Barnaoul he proceeded with an imperial courier to Tomsk, discovering as he rode along marks of the tremendous winds which sometimes devastate Siberia. The trees of the forest were uprooted, and whole fields of grain were beaten into the earth. Hurrying onward in the same rapid manner, he crossed the Yeïusei at Krasnojarsk, and entered a rough mountainous country covered with thick forests, which continued all the way to Irkutsk, where he arrived in ten days after leaving Tomsk.
During his stay in this town he made an excursion, in company with a German colonel, to the Lake Baikal, which, in the Kalmuck language, signifies the “North Sea.” Arriving on the shores of the lake, they found a galliot, which in summer plies as a packet across the “North Sea.” In this galliot they went out with line and lead to take soundings; but having only fifty fathoms of line, which at one hundred feet from the shore was wholly taken up, they quickly abandoned their soundings, and returned through the rain in the galliot’s boat to Irkutsk.
On the 26th of August he quitted Irkutsk, and proceeded towards the point where he was to embark on the river Lena for Yakutsk. The country in this part was well cultivated, and therefore cheerful; but the forest trees had already begun to drop their foliage, and put on the garb of autumn. Having proceeded one hundred and fifty miles in his kibitka, he embarked with Lieutenant Laxman, a Swede, in a boat on the Lena, and commenced a voyage of fourteen hundred miles. Their boat was carried along at the rate of eighty or a hundred miles per day, “the river gradually increasing in size, and the mountain scenery putting on an infinite variety of forms, alternately sublime and picturesque, bold and fantastic, with craggy rocks and jutting headlands, bearing on their brows the verdure of pines, larches, and other evergreens, and alpine shrubs.” All the way to Yakutsk the river was studded with islands, which, recurring at short intervals, added to the romantic effect of the scenery; but the weather was growing cold, and heavy fogs hung over the river until a late hour in the morning. The mountains flanking the river were said to abound with wolves and bears; and there was an abundance of wild fowl, of which our travellers shot as many as they pleased. Salmon-trout was plentiful in the river; and the inhabitants fished with seines, and also with spears, like the natives of Tahiti, by torchlight.