now used for goods is from the Pacific up the Amoor as far as the Shilka. Thence to the Baikal land carriage is at present used, but the Shilka itself is capable of navigation much higher up. The London and China Telegraph, August 15, 1864, reports that a steamer has lately ascended this river and its tributary the Ingoda as far as Chita, the government town of Trans-Baikal. From the Baikal the communication is by water down the Angara to Irkutsk, and 1400 miles beyond that town, to the junction of the Angara with the Yenisei, in the north of the province of Irkutsk. The water-route on the Angara below the town of Irkutsk is only used for traffic to the north. Goods in transit for Europe go by land from Irkutsk to Tomsk. From the west, the Siberian water-route begins at Tumen, proceeding down the Irtish from Tobolsk, then up the Ob and the Tom as far as Tomsk. Then, if for the northern part of Eastern Siberia, land carriage from Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk; from the latter town down the Yenisei to the towns of Yeniseisk and Turukhansk, beyond which the country is inhabited only by wandering Tunguses and Ostiaks. There are other important water-routes in Siberia, such as that from Tumen by the Ob and Irtish to Semipalatinsk on the Kirghis steppe; and from Irkutsk down the Lena to Yakutsk, but the lines of greatest traffic are those running east and west. The ice interposes a serious difficulty in the navigation of these rivers, especially in the more northern parts, where the summer is very short, and frost sets in early. Goods are frequently caught in the ice, and in some parts of the rivers, they may be frozen up for six, or even eight months together. This risk would, of course, be greatly diminished were steam in more general use. The duration of a voyage could then be calculated with tolerable certainty, and a convenient port reached after the premonitory indications of freezing-up had shown themselves. Steam would also afford the means of expediting goods so much quicker, that the heavy part of the year's traffic might be conveyed by the rivers during the open season.