﻿664 Pi'of. Ilihie — Across Europe and Asia. 



could see that many large boulders liad been taken. These were 

 gneissic in their character, and some of them were one or two feet 

 in diameter. 



I did not see Lake Baikal until I was almost in it. This was at 

 the village of Kultuchno, the entrance to which is down a steep hill 

 leading directly towards the water. It was from the top of this hill 

 that I had my first view of what the Eussians eulogize as the ' Holy 

 Sea,' the dark blue waters of which contrasted strikingly with the 

 small white peaks which capped the distant hills. Large waves 

 were forming under a stiff breeze, which jostled packs of floating- 

 ice, and drove them into the bays. My road now led round the 

 borders of the lake, beside which, for some two or three versts, I 

 glided along over the frozen waters of a small lagoon. Before me, 

 on the sides of some of the hills which led backwards from the 

 south end of the lake, I saw some small parallel lines, which I took 

 to be old lake-terraces. These were also conspicuous further on 

 the road behind the station of Mooravoya Amoorskaya. 



It was not long before I was travelling eastwards along the 

 southern end of the lake. I was, so to speak, upon a ledge running 

 along the face of high gneissic rocks. Although I had in places 

 cliffs above me on the right, and cliffs beneath me on the left, the 

 road is by no means so romantic as I had anticipated from the de- 

 scription. Notwithstanding my elevation, when looking up the lake 

 a sea horizon always met my eye. The east and west shores 

 of this large piece of water, which is about 400 miles long, and 45 

 miles broad, are very different in their appearance, — the eastern 

 side sloping gently backwards to peaked hills, and the western being 

 bounded by almost perpendicular cliffs, or else by steep slopes. 

 Along the faces of these latter I fancied I could see a horizontal 

 stratification, indicating that their dip was probably towards the 

 west. This being the case, then, the origin of the clifif-like face 

 upon the western shore of the Baikal is due to a similar cause as 

 that producing the greater number of escarpments, which are nearly 

 always formed at right angles to the dip of the rock in which they 

 are cut. Here, however, instead of having volcanic agencies so 

 prominently at work, we have the action of the waters of the lake 

 itself, which, washing against its western shore, readily undercuts the 

 strata. These strata, like those of a sea-cliff, ultimately fall down, 

 and are afterwards washed away. In this way we might suppose that 

 the boundaries of the Baikal are extending westwards in a similar 

 manner to that in which many of the escarpments of England are 

 gradually receding eastwards. Tracing such an action backwards, we 

 may readily conceive a time when this lake, instead of being forty-five 

 miles broad, was only one mile broad, when it was in fact little more 

 than the borders of a river running from the N.E. towards the S.W. 

 This might be represented by the right hand branch of the letter V, 

 the left-hand portion of which still remains as represented by the 

 Eiver Angara, running to the N.W. This may or may not have been 

 the origin of the hollow in which the Baikal now rests, but it 

 certainly appears to be connected with its enlargement, and is more 



