START FOR LAKE BAIKAL 37 



guests, and would hear of no excuse. He became so 

 pressing towards the end of dinner that we deemed it 

 best to return to the hotel on the plea of having to pack 

 up our belongings. Luckily the special train which 

 was to convey us to the shores of Lake Baikal was 

 ready at the station, and we decided to sleep in the 

 car that night. 



Early in the morning we were awakened by angry 

 voices in the passage ; the train was already on the 

 move. I hurriedly dressed, and rushing out of my 

 cabin found Cristo in altercation with the guard. It 

 appeared that one of my portmanteaus had been 

 stolen during the night ; it contained all my books 

 and maps, some of which had been found by a gen- 

 darme strewing the railway line and had been brought 

 on by him in a muddy condition. The thief had evi- 

 dently scattered the contents of my bag in disgust. 

 But the maps were lost and the robber was never 

 discovered. 



At nine a.m. we slowly steamed on to the pier of the 

 lake and found the lar^e ice-cutter Baikal awaitinsf 

 us alongside. This large steam ferryboat, built at 

 Newcastle on the model of those on Lake Erie in the 

 United States, transports the whole train of twenty to 

 thirty cars to Myssovaia on the eastern shores of the 

 lake — a distance of about sixty miles — in live hours. 



