stay there, we made excursions into the neighbourhood of the town, for instance to 

 Buistraya and the salt lake Tagarski osero', and then left Minusinsk to set 

 out on our way to the south-east into the Urjankai country. During the first days the 

 route lay as shown on the map. direct eastwards through a hilly steppe-land, leading past 

 the villages of Taskina and Karat us to Kushabar. the last settlement 

 in these parts. Here, the rich, open plain-lands of Siberia come to an end, and before 

 us extended immense areas of primeval forest. A kind of path or route rather indistinctly 

 marked out leads from the said village through the Sayansk range into Mongolia, only 

 rarely availed of by some lonely fur-trader or by gold-diggers from the mines among 

 the mountains. This route, however, being very difficult, and at any rate impracticable 

 with heavily loaded pack-horses, which would make us run great risks and waste time, 

 we hired at Kushabar a number of boatmen, who poled our luggage in flat-bottomed 

 canoes southwards up the Amyl River. While a couple of the members of the expe- 

 dition had to join the boatmen to look after the luggage, the rest set off on horseback 

 through the «Taiga», accompanied by some guides. As a botanist, wishing to study the 

 vegetation and the forest more closely, I chose to join the latter party. The Amyl River is 

 passable in canoes about 120 wersts southwards up to K a 1 n a, a lonely Russian settle- 

 ment on the Upper Amyl. Here both parties met again, and from here all our 

 luggage was carried by pack-horses through the Algiac Pass, forming the boundary 

 between Siberia and Mongolia. Here we left Russian territory, and passed over into 

 Chinese Mongolia, and on the 20tTi of July we arrived at U s t Algiac, on the south 

 side of the Sayansk mountains. Ust Algiac is situated on the river Sisti-ke m^ 

 a tributary of the B e i - k e m. From Ust Algiac, serving as our head- 

 quarters, we made shorter and longer excursions into the surrounding country, 

 for instance to a Soyote camp on the river Tshernoretska, and to a snowy 

 mountain, to the north, where we had an opportunity to study the alpine flora and 

 fauna and make collections. In a sketch in the above-mentioned book by 

 Carruthers, these mountains are only reported as «White Mountains». According to 

 the designation of the natives, I have, in the following, applied the name of «A 1 1 a i a n» 

 to this mountain mass. After more than a fortnight's stay in this rather rainy tract, we 

 floated with our luggage on the Sth of August down the Sisti-kem in a raft made for the 

 purpose, as our collections had added to the impediments, and arrived at Ust 

 Sisti-kem on the Bei-kem in the evening the 9th of August. 



After making several excursions from here, we left most of our luggage behind and 

 travelled further on southwards past Ust Kamsara, Saimka Lobanowa, 

 and the river I i to K o k u s and Safianow on Ust Dora-kem, and right south 

 to the centre of the Soyotes on the D o r a s t e p p e, near T o d s h i - k u 1,^ the sacred 

 lake of the Soyotes. After about a week's stay here, during which we also visited the 



osero (Eussian) = lake. 



Kem is a Soyote word, meaning river; Sisti is also a Soyote word, meaning small in contradistinc- 

 tion from b e i = large. Bei-kem — the large river — is the name given to the Yenisei by the natives. 

 Kul is a Soyote word, meaning lake. 



3 



