"What I thought in my own language I said in French to one of my Russian friends. He spoke in Russian to his Russian-Mongol interpreter, who spoke in Mongol to the Mongol-Chinese interpreter of the Sargootchay. Remarks and responses thus had to pass through four tongues to reach their destination.
THEATRE AT MAI-MAI-CHIN.
"The dinner was probably like what you had at Peking or Canton, and so I will not take the time to describe it. After dinner we went to the theatre, where we sat under a canopy and witnessed a performance which included, among other things, a procession of fictitious wild beasts. That they were very fictitious was shown by the accident of the tiger's mask falling off and revealing the head of an astonished man.
THE TIGER.
"The thermometer was below the freezing-point, and as the theatre was in the open air, I was very glad that the performance was short.
"From Kiachta I returned to Verckne Udinsk, and then proceeded to Irkutsk by way of Lake Baikal. This lake is said to be the largest body of fresh water in Asia. It is four hundred miles long by about fifty broad, and is fourteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. The quantity of water flowing into it is said to be ten times as much as passes from it by its outlet, the Angara River. What becomes of the other nine-tenths is a mystery that has puzzled many scientific men; none of them have been able to establish a theory which the others have not completely upset.