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before the conference was concluded, I endeavoured to engage the 
Regent’s attention, with a hope of acquiring some information upon 
a subject, which I was extremely anxious to investigate. 
My inquiries respected an ancient nation, supposed to have once 
inhabited the borders of the Baikal sea, in the interior of Tartary, and 
from which some persons conjecture, the learning, arts, and sciences of 
India, and even of Europe, to have been originally derived. If such a 
nation ever existed, the remembrance of it seems now to be buried in 
deepest oblivion. 
Siberia and Baikal were names equally unknown to them; however, 
by setting before them Kiatchta, the point of division, and great scene 
of traffic between the Chinese and Russian empires, situated at the 
south-eastern extremity of the latter, I was able to identify the region, 
to which I wished to draw their attention. 
Soopoon Choomboo had travelled from Kharka, the residence of 
Taranaut Lama, in Kilmauk, to China; he had traversed the borders 
of the Baikal sea, and lived long, amongst the northern Tartars. The 
Baikal lake, he informed me, was particularly celebrated for the pro¬ 
duction of pearls, remarkable for their size, but imperfect in colour and 
shape, and therefore held in no great estimation. Its neighbourhood, 
he said, was thinly inhabited, nor to his knowledge, was any monu¬ 
ment existing, that bore marks of remote antiquity. The Tartars of 
that vicinity were found, as was remarkably the case in advancing 
towards the north, more ignorant, and less civilized, than their southern 
neighbours. The people beyond the desert, he added, are a wander¬ 
ing race, that inhabit tents, and inherit such powerful prepossessions 
