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Updated: June 20, 2025
As before remarked all the country east of Lake Baikal is open to free trade. This result has been secured by the efforts of the present governor general of Eastern Siberia. Under his liberal and enlightened policy he has done much to break down the old restrictions and develop the resources of a country over which he holds almost autocratic power.
East of Lake Baikal the line gradually winds its way up to a plateau some 3000 feet higher than the lake, and then descends to treacherous marsh lands. All these difficulties have been overcome in course of time; but there remained the question of the terminus.
Capital punishment, except in cases of attacks on the royal family and condemnation by courts-martial, was abolished many years ago. Lake Baikal is one of the most remarkable lakes in the world. It is four hundred miles long and from twenty to sixty miles wide. The lake is very deep, and, although situated in the temperate zone, is the home of a species of arctic seal and tropical coral.
The insurrection caused much alarm at its outbreak, as it was supposed all prisoners in Siberia were in the conspiracy. Exaggerated reports were spread, and all possible precautions taken, but they proved unnecessary. The conspiracy extended no farther than the working parties on the Baikal road. The prisoners were brought to Irkutsk, where a court-martial investigated the affair.
The 'politiques' sentenced to hard labor were employed in building; roads, most of them being sent to the southern end of Lake Baikal. In June, 1866, seven hundred and twenty prisoners were sent to this labor, and divided into eight or ten parties to work on as many sections of the road. Before the end of the month a revolt occurred.
The weather was still and sunny. The water of Lake Baikal is the colour of turquoise, more transparent than the Black Sea. They say that in deep places you can see the bottom over a verst below; and I myself have seen to such a depth, with rocks and mountains plunged in the turquoise-blue, that it sent a shiver all over me. Our journey over Lake Baikal was wonderful.
The Yenisei rises in Chinese territory, and, running northwards right through Siberia, falls into the Arctic Ocean. It receives a large number of affluents, most of them from the east. Its banks are clothed with forest, and from Minusinsk downwards the river is navigable. The Lena, the great river which passes through eastern Siberia north-east of Baikal, is not much smaller than the Yenisei.
Michael therefore took immense interest in ascertaining what was the state of the lake, and whether any large number of ice blocks appeared. Nadia being now awake, he questioned her often, and she gave him an account of all that was going on. Whilst the blocks were thus drifting, curious phenomena were taking place on the surface of the Baikal.
The Czar, in fact, now inaugurated a forward Asiatic policy, and confided it to an able governor, Muravieff . The new departure was marked by the issue of an imperial ukase ordering the Russian settlers beyond Lake Baikal to conform to the Cossack system; that is, to become liable to military duties in return for the holding of land in the more exposed positions.
They founded Tobolsk in 1587 and Tomsk in 1604; they established Yakutsk on the Lena River in 1632, and Irkutsk on Lake Baikal in 1652; in 1638 they reached the Sea of Okhotsk, and, by the close of the seventeenth century, they occupied the peninsula of Kamchatka and looked upon the broad Pacific.
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