Mr St John on the Mongols, 257 



eastern banks of Lake Baikal, round the mouth of the Selinga, 

 which, flowing from the very heart of Mongolia, seemed to 

 tempt them upwards to the land which they afterwards occu- 

 pied. They settled also in the islands of the lake ; and 01k- 

 hon is still inhabited by their descendants (the Buriats), who 

 possess fine herds of cattle, cultivate the ground, which they 

 carefully irrigate by little runnels derived from their rare 

 springs, hunt wolves, bears, and squirrels, and cross over to 

 the southern shores of the lake to capture the seal. Previous 

 to the promulgation of the Lamaic religion among the Mon- 

 gols, the waters of Baikal, and the mountainous island I have 

 mentioned, seem to have monopolised a considerable portion 

 of the veneration of the people of this part of Central Asia. 

 Olkhon was, and is indeed still by many, believed to be the 

 habitation of a god invested with certain ill-defined attributes 

 of terror ; and the lake itself has been endowed with conscious- 

 ness and a due sense of its own importance. It will not, it is 

 said, submit to receive the contemptuous epithet of Osera, 

 *' sleeping or stagnant water," and stickles for the appella- 

 tion of Dalai, or " sea." By its very nature, however, it is 

 precluded from avenging its dignity on those who insult it 

 from the land ; but woe to him who ventures to treat it igno- 

 miniously, whilst sailing or sliding over its surface ! Tempests 

 blow, waves rise, the ice cracks, and the ingratitude of the tra- 

 veller is often punished with death ! An adventurous Russian 

 resolved once to try the temper of the liquid divinity, and, 

 when he had reached the centre, poured out a glass of brandy, 

 in v/hich he drank the health of the Christians of Europe, 

 calling upon the lake, by the opprobrious epithet of Osera, to 

 be his witness. The terrified natives every instant expected 

 to hear the first howl of the hurricane, but the weather was 

 more than ordinarily serene, and they urged their sledges 

 hurriedly towards terra firma, wondering at the unusual for- 

 bearance of the insulted lake ! 



It was in such a situation, and in the midst of such super- 

 stitions, that the tribe of Mongols grew up, scarcely keeping 

 pace with its neighbours in knowledge and civilisation, until 

 the birth of the Great Temugin — by some, derived from a 

 smith — ^by others, from an ancient family who introduced the 



