The sledge-route that leads to the Chinese frontier goes southward from Verhneudinsk across the territory of Transbaikalia. In old days one reached its starting-point by traversing the frozen Lake Baikal in sleighs, muffled in furs against the sweep of the terrible winds, with plunging ponies at full gallop. Now, after mighty effort and at monumental cost, the line of the great railroad has been driven through the last obstacles that blocked an open way, and trains carry the traveler through the deep cuts and tunnels that pierce the barrier crags around the Holy Sea. It is not the express that one takes at the Irkutsk station to reach the ancient fort, but the daily post-train, the servant of local traffic. Luggage-cumbered passengers crowd into the cars wherever there is a place. A few, and these mostly officials, establish themselves in the blue-painted first class. Many press into the yellow second class--merchants, lesser chinovniks, tradesmen, popes, and children on their way to the city schools. Swarms pour into the green wooden-benched third, where the thronging tousle-headed emigrants patiently huddle closer to give room to newcomers. Next to the engine, with its big smokestack, is the mail-wagon, on whose sides are painted crossed post-horns and the picture of a sealed letter. Behind this, with a sentry on guard, is the baggage-car. The sinister compartment of drawn shutters and barred windows is for the prisoners. In this princes or artel-workers, their identity unsuspected, can be run across a continent to their unknown places of exile. The post-train starts from Irkutsk occasionally on time. In general, along the local line the time-table is about as reliable a guide as the calendars sold to the mujiks, with weather prophecies for each day of the year. Fifteen miles an hour is mean speed. Stops may be for minutes or for hours. One settles down therefore in the attitude sacred to a yachting cruise,--foie gras and bridge, if it is calm; double reefs and pilot-bread if it blows up. The high heavens alone know when we are to get in, and nobody cares. It is not unpleasant withal to sprawl over a great broad couch, and as the train crawls forward watch the white highlands slowly unroll, the towering cliffs and peaks with spear-like pines driving up through the snow, and the icy lake below.