description, is heightened exceedingly by the dashing and roaring of the waters, which impress the beholder with ideas of the irresistible power and grandeur of nature, the privilege to contemplate which elevates and ennobles him in his own estimation. And this, in reality, is the principal source of the pleasure we derive from the view of stupendous mountains, the tempestuous ocean, cataracts, volcanoes, or conflagrations.
They now embarked on the Baikal, which, as Gibbon facetiously observes, disdains the modest appellation of a lake, and on receding from the land enjoyed a full prospect of its western shores, rising abruptly into rocky pinnacles capped with snow, and towering far above every thing around them. These stretched away immeasurably towards the north, until they were lost in the distance. On the south the view was bounded by hills of gentler elevation, whose tops, for the most part, were covered with wood. Their passage was tedious, for on approaching the mouth of the Selinga they found the whole shore skirted by long reefs of floating icebergs, between which they forced their way with considerable difficulty. However, they at length entered the Selinga, and ascending partly in their boats and partly on horseback along its banks, arrived safely at Selinguisky on the 29th of May.
At this town, which, like the ancient Chalcedony on the Bosphorus, may be termed the "City of the Blind," being built upon an inconvenient spot in the neighbourhood of an excellent one, they were to remain until the court of Pekin, which had been informed of their approach, should send an officer to conduct them over the frontiers. In the mean time every person amused himself according to his taste. Our honest and intelligent traveller, as he is very properly denominated by Gibbon, whose chief pleasure consisted in observing the manners of mankind, had here an ample field before him, in a variety of
