The water of the lake is so clear that one can see to a very great depth.  The lake is nearly four hundred miles long by about thirty or thirty-five in width; it is twelve hundred feet above the sea level, and receives nearly two hundred tributaries great and small.  Its outlet, the Angara, is near the southwestern end, and is said to carry off not more than a tenth of the water that enters the lake.  What becomes of the surplus is a problem no one has been able to solve.  The natives believe there is an underground passage to the sea, and sonic geologists favor this opinion.  Soundings of 2000 feet have been made without finding bottom.  On the western shore the mountains rise abruptly from the water, and in some places no bottom has been found at 400 feet depth, within pistol shot of the bank.  This fact renders navigation dangerous, as a boat might be driven on shore in even a light breeze before her anchors found holding ground.

The natives have many superstitions concerning Lake Baikal.  In their language it is the “Holy Sea,” and it would be sacrilege to term it a lake.  Certainly it has several marine peculiarities.  Gulls and other ocean birds frequent its shores, and it is the only body of fresh water on the globe where the seal abounds.  Banks of coral like those in tropical seas exist in its depths.

[Illustration:  AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE.]

The mountains on the western shore are evidently of volcanic origin, and earthquakes are not unfrequent.  A few years ago the village of Stepnoi, about twenty miles from the mouth of the Selenga, was destroyed by an earthquake.  Part of the village disappeared beneath the water while another part after sinking was lifted twenty or thirty feet above its original level.  Irkutsk has been frequently shaken at the foundations, and on one occasion the walls of its churches were somewhat damaged.  Around Lake Baikal there are several hot springs, some of which attract fashionable visitors from Irkutsk during the season.

[Illustration:  LAKE BAIKAL IN WINTER]

The natives say nobody was ever lost in Lake Baikal.  When a person is drowned there the waves invariably throw his body on shore.

The lake does not freeze until the middle of December, and sometimes later.  Its temperature remains pretty nearly the same at all seasons, about 48 deg.  Fahrenheit.  In winter it is crossed on the ice, the passage ordinarily occupying about five hours.  The lake generally freezes when the air is perfectly still so that the surface is of glossy smoothness until covered with snow.  A gentleman in Irkutsk described to me his feelings when he crossed Lake Baikal in winter for the first time.  The ice was six feet thick, but so perfectly transparent that he seemed driving over the surface of the water.  The illusion was complete, and not wholly dispelled when he alighted.  “Starting from the western side, the opposite coast was not visible, and I experienced” said my friend, “the sensation of setting out in a sleigh to cross the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York.”