gulls of every known category are certainly to be found there, and wild
duck in variety and numbers to satisfy the most exacting sportsman.

Passing along this wonderful panorama for some hours we arrived at
Baikal. The maps supplied to me show the railway as making a bee line
from the south of the lake to Irkutsk. This is not so; the line does not
deviate an inch from the western shores of the lake until it touches the
station. Baikal is reached nearly opposite the point at which the
railway strikes the lake on the eastern side. The lake is fed by the
River Selengha, which drains the northern mountains and plains of
Mongolia. No river of importance enters it on the north except the
short, high Anghara; in fact, the rivers Armur and Lenha start from
quite near its northern and eastern extremities. It is drained on the
west by the famous River Anghara, which rises near Baikal, and enters
the Polar Sea at a spot so far north as to be uninhabitable, except for
the white bears who fight for the possession of icebergs.

Baikal had been the scene of a titanic struggle between the
Czecho-Slovak forces and the Bolsheviks, who had in case of defeat
planned the complete and effective destruction of the line by blowing up
the numerous tunnels alongside the lake, which it must have taken at
least two years to repair. The Czechs moved so rapidly, however, that
the enemy were obliged to concentrate at Baikal for the defence of their
own line of communication. Before they had made up their minds that they
were already defeated a lucky Czech shot struck their store of dynamite
and blew the station, their trains, and about three hundred of their men
to smithereens. The remainder retreated off the line in a southerly
direction, and after many days' pursuit were lost in the forests which
form the chief barrier between Siberia and Mongolia, to emerge later on
an important point on the railway near Omsk.