We crossed the lake in the steamer. Its summer aspect is far less striking than the strange glory which it wears when it is frozen, and the distant mountains seem like “a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.” In summer the waters are blue, the nearer hills grey and the distant mountains blue, but with nothing strange or unreal about them. Yet when the sunset silvered the grey tints and spread a ragged golden banner in the sky, the lake was extremely beautiful in another way. At Baikal station there was the usual struggle for places in the train. How well I remembered the desperate struggle I had gone through to get a seat in a third-class carriage at this same place last year! This time it was in the first-class carriage that the conflict took place. An engineer got into the same carriage as I did. He occupied one of the lower berths and I the other. Presently a lady arrived, bound for Chita, and looking for a place. She came into our carriage and asked to be allowed to have one of the lower berths. The engineer flatly refused and said that he had occupied his seat and had a right to keep it. I told her I would let her have mine with pleasure. She occupied it and went out. I moved my things into the upper berth. “Why on earth did you give up your seat?” the engineer asked. “You had a _right_ to keep it.” When the lady came back she said to me: “Ah! you are evidently not a Russian; no Russian would have given up his place.” The engineer turned out to be quite a good-natured sort of person, but there is something about trains which makes people who are by nature mild and good-natured turn into savages, and instils into them a passionate determination to cleave to their rights. The next morning another man arrived in our carriage, with a large basket and a second-class ticket. This upset the engineer, who complained to the “Controller” of the train, and the poor man was turned out. The engineer snorted and said: “There’s an insolent fellow for you.” The lady was the wife of an engineer who was employed at Chita; and she told me much about life in Chita: how hard times were, owing to the war, how scarce food was getting— “Und wie so teuer der Kaffee, Und wie so rar das Geld!”