The streets of Irkutsk are of good width and generally intersect at right angles.  Most of the buildings are of wood, and usually large and well built.  The best houses are of stone, or of brick covered with plaster to resemble stone.  Very few dwellings are entered directly from the street, the outer doors opening into yards according to the Russian custom.  To visit a person you pass into an enclosure through a strong gateway, generally open by day but closed at night.  A ‘dvornik’ (doorkeeper) has the control of this gate, and is responsible for everything within it.  Storehouses and all other buildings of the establishment open upon the enclosure, and frequently two or more houses have one gate in common.

The stores or magazines are numerous, and well supplied with European goods.  Some of the stocks are very large, and must require heavy capital or excellent credit to manage them.  Tailors and milliners are abundant, and bring their modes from Paris.  Occasionally they paint their signs in French, and display the latest novelties from the center of fashion.  Bakers are numerous and well patronized. ‘Frantsooski kleb,’ (French bread,) which is simply white bread made into rolls, is popular and largely sold in Irkutsk.

One of my daily exercises in Russian was to spell the signs upon the stores.  In riding I could rarely get more than half through a word before I was whisked out of sight.  I never before knew how convenient are symbolic signs to a man who cannot read.  A picture of a hat, a glove, or a loaf of bread was far more expressive to my eye than the word shapka, perchatki, or kleb, printed in Russian letters.

The Russians smoke a great deal of tobacco in paper cigarettes or ‘papiros.’  Everywhere east of Lake Baikal the papiros of Irkutsk is in demand, and the manufacture there is quite extensive.  In Irkutsk and to the westward the brand of Moscow is preferred.  The consumption of tobacco in this form throughout the empire must be something enormous.  I have known a party of half a dozen persons to smoke a hundred cigarettes in an afternoon and evening.  Many ladies indulge in smoking, but the practice is not universal.  I do not remember any unmarried lady addicted to it.

Irkutsk was founded in 1680, and has at present a population of twenty-eight or thirty thousand.  About four thousand gold miners spend the winter and their money in the city.  Geographically it is in Latitude 52 deg. 40’ north, and Longitude 104 deg. 20’ east from Greenwich.  Little wind blows there, and storms are less frequent than at Moscow or St. Petersburg.  The snows are not abundant, the quantity that falls being smaller than in Boston and very much less than in Montreal or Quebec.  In summer or winter the panorama of Irkutsk and its surroundings is one of great beauty.

[Illustration:  VIEW IN IRKUTSK.]

There are twenty or more churches, of which nearly all are large and finely placed.  Several of them were planned and constructed by two Swedish engineer officers captured at Pultawa and exiled to Siberia.  They are excellent monuments of architectural skill, and would be ornamental to any European city.