ce, inundations are frequent, and sometimes cause great
destruction to life and property. Winter is, therefore, the pleasantest
season here, for during dry warm weather the clouds of black gritty
dust are unbearable, especially on windy days. Indeed, the dust here is
almost worse than in Pekin, where the natives say that it will work its
way through a watch-glass, no exaggeration, as I can, from personal
experience, testify.

There was little enough to do here during our five days of enforced
inactivity, and time crawled away with exasperating slowness, the more
so that the waste of every hour was lessening our chance of success. But
although harassed myself by anxiety, I managed to conceal the fact from
de Clinchamp, whose Gallic nature was proof against _ennui_, and who
managed to find friends and amusement even in this dismal city. In
summer we might have killed time by an excursion to Lake Baikal,[2] for
I retain very pleasant recollections of a week passed, some years since,
on the pine-clad margin of this the largest lake in Asia, sixty-six
times the area of the Lake of Geneva. Now its wintry shores and frozen
waters possessed no attraction, save, perhaps, the ice-breaker used by
the Trans-Siberian Railway to carry passengers across the lake, a
passage of about twenty miles. But even the ice-breaker had met with an
accident, and was temporarily disabled. So there was literally nothing
to do but to linger as long as possible over the midday meal in the
dingy little restaurant, and then to stroll aimlessly up and down the
"Bolshaya," the main thoroughfare aforementioned, until dusk. This is
the fashionable drive of the city, which on bright days presented an
almost animated appearance. There is no lack of money in Irkutsk, for
gold-mining millionaires abound, and I generally spent the afternoon
watching the cavalcade of well-appointed sleighs dashing, with a merry
clash of bells, up and down the crowded street, and sauntering amongst
the groups of well-dressed women and brilliant uniforms, until darkness
drove me back to our unsavoury quarters at the Metropole. My companions
generally patronised the skating rink, a sign of advancing civilisation,
for ten years ago there was not a pair of skates to be found throughout
the length and breadth of Siberia. Thus passed our days, and the
evenings were even longer and more wearisome. Once we visited the Opera,
a new and beautifully-decorated house, but the performance was
e