least five minutes doing it; and it was with no small satisfaction that we found ourselves standing on the rocks, some twenty feet above the water, wishing as safe a passage to our friends. When I saw them drawn up on the little bank, and then dash into the stream, I felt the danger of their position more than when crossing myself. Their horses breasted the torrent bravely, and all were safely landed; the dog was placed on one of the pack-horses, where he lay between the bags in perfect security. I am certain that every man felt a relief when the enterprise was accomplished, which would have been impossible had the water been three inches deeper.” Continuing their ride down the valley, in about ten hours the party reached the river Katounaia and the grassy valley through which it foams and flows. Their route lay up its banks, and speedily brought them to the broad swift stream of the Tourgau, which reflects in its water groups of cedars and birches, with rows of tall poplars decked in foliage of the richest colours. Fording the Tourgau, they soon afterwards came again upon the Katounaia, and crossing it, reached a bend in the valley, which presented to them the monarch of the Altai chain, the magnificent Bielouka. Its stupendous mass uplifts two enormous peaks, buttressed by huge rocks, which enclose a number of valleys or ravines filled with glaciers; these roll their frozen floods to the brink of the imposing precipices which overhang the valley of the Katounaia. Mr. Atkinson determined on attempting the ascent of this regal height. It was a bright morning when he started, and the two white peaks shone grandly in the early sunshine, which gradually dipped down into the valley, and with its fringes of gold touched the sombre cedars. An hour’s ride carried him and his followers to the bifurcation of the Katounaia, and then they ascended the north-eastern arm, which rises among the glaciers of the Bielouka. When they had got beyond the last tree that struggled up the mountain’s side, they dismounted; and Mr. Atkinson, with the hunter, Zepta, and three Kalmucks, pressed forward on foot, leaving the others in charge of the horses. At first they clambered over the ruins of a mighty avalanche, which in the preceding summer had cloven its way down the precipices, until they reached the glacier, stretching far up the mountain, whence wells the Katounaia in two little ice-cold, transparent streams. There they halted for their mid-day meal. Turning to the west, they toiled up a terrific gorge, filled with fallen rocks and ice, and then climbed a rugged acclivity that, like an inclined plane, reached to the very base of one of the peaks of the Bielouka. Step after step they wearily but persistently ascended, until they reached the frozen snow, scaling which for about three hundred paces they reached the base of the peak, already at such a height as to overlook every summit of the Altai. Far away to the west