Eiusdem Synopsis methodica animalium Quadrupedum et serpentini generis [Ray’s Methodical Synopsis of Four-Footed and of Serpent Animal Genera]
Nine pounds of gunpowder
Two and a quarter pounds of quicksilver
Nine pounds of cotton
Five reams of stationery paper
Three books of thin stationery paper
Six books of gray paper
Twelve small pots for samples
Twenty pounds of Moscow clay from which to make such pots
One barometric glass tube with scale board
For the anatomical observations:
One hamulus [small surgical hook]
Four different-size needles
Five knives
Three lancets
The student Gorlanov was given the following Crown books:
Physicae modernae sanioris compendium Erotematicum Johannis Christophori Sturmii [Johann Christoph Sturm’s Love-Themed Compendium of Curative Modern Physics]
C. Sallustii opera [Sallust’s Works]
Juvenalis et Persii Satyrae [Satyr Plays of Juvenal and Persius]
Plinii Junioris Epistolae [Pliny the Younger’s Letters]
Grammatica Germano-Russica [German-Russian Grammar]
The prospector Grigorei Samoilov received:
Two hammers
Two pickaxes
One hoe
One shovel
Eight mattocks
One hatchet
The huntsman Giliashev was issued his rifle.
Notes
1. Title and function likely corresponding to an English councillor’s.
2. Literally, foreigners; at the time, usually foreigners in Russian service, but iasachnye inozemtsy meant yasak-paying Siberian tribes. WH, Glossar. Gmelin and Müller use the term to refer to the indigenous peoples.
3. German (G), collection established by Peter the Great in St. Petersburg and completed in 1727, dedicated to preserving natural and human curiosities and rarities.
DESCRIPTION OF IRKUTSK AND ITS SURROUNDINGS
ABOUT IRKUTSK AND ITS SURROUNDINGS
IN DESCRIBING THE TOWN OF IRKUTSK AND ITS surroundings, I can be brief, since I am well aware that Professor Müller’s incredible diligence and skill have omitted nothing concerning the region, the public buildings, the number of private dwellings, the founding and growth of the place, the inhabitants’ trade and character, and the income of the province and town. I also know that the town’s location together with the advantages a kind Nature has bestowed on it have been described in such a way that to write more about it is quite unnecessary. Strictly for order’s sake, I shall limit my observations to the shortest review of some information received, in order to proceed to a more thorough description of Lake Baikal.
The town of Irkutsk was built at 52°12′ northern latitude on the western bank of the Angara River, in the middle of three rivers: the Angara; the Irkut, which flows into the Angara’s eastern bank above the town; and the Ushakovka, a small stream that joins the Angara’s western bank directly below the town. I shall write more about it below.
This town got its start as well as its name about sixty years ago with the construction of a zimov’e1 on the Irkut River. Because of its location, which is pleasant and convenient for trade, in a short time it became so popular with the Russians that due to its many advantages it can now rival the fame of Tobolsk, the capital [of Siberia since 1709]. Although the town has now left its original location, having moved from the bank of the Irkut to the west bank of the Angara, it has nevertheless retained its original name of Irkutsk.
Its location is undeniably one of the healthiest and most pleasant places in all of Siberia. From the south to the north, the Angara River flows past it, which is so clear and fast it likely has no equal in all of Russia and Siberia—few, if any, in the rest of the world. It flows from Lake Baikal, emptying sixty-one kilometers from Yeniseysk into the Yenisey.
Fig. 1.1. Steller’s handwritten manuscript of part of the facing page, Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Reprinted with permission.
The Angara’s bottom is rocky, its current so fast that though the water is very cold, it does not begin to freeze up until a few days before Christmas, some years as late as the first or even the sixth or seventh of January. By then, all the other rivers in the country can already be used as ice roads. The lake always freezes first and afterward the Angara . . . [omission in MS.]. About forty kilometers [in text, verst, R, equals 1.067 kilometers; consistently translated as kilometers] from town, where the steep mountains and cliffs begin and hug the bank, the Angara tends to break up again almost every year around January 12 to 15 when the water flowing past Irkutsk begins to recede, forcing travelers to stay put, which happened to me, too, in 1740, much to my vexation. In the area forty kilometers from Irkutsk and fourteen from Nikolski, where the Angara often opens up, I came upon an extremely rare circumstance, emphatically worth mentioning. On the highest mountain summits, you find whole layers of round or oval gravel, waterworn in many ways; you can undeniably conclude that they had previously lain in water. I’ll let others guess how they got there. I cannot think of a reason, especially since there are no indications whatsoever of a previous great flood in these parts, which is evident from the complete lack of petrifications.2 Unlike the species of salmon and trout, those river fish whose fins are not suitable for swimming upriver against the current cannot sustain themselves in the Angara River. Consequently, the absence of the Eurasian ruffe [Gymnocephalus cernua] that occurs in all Siberian rivers is due not to antipathy but to the rigidity of its dorsal fins [not a valid scientific explanation. Arkadii Vladimirovich Balushkin, in WH, Anm. 16]. For these fish are found in the Angara far below the Balaganskoi Ostrog where the current is considerably slower. This river’s water is extraordinarily clean, light, and clear so that for thirty-five or forty-two, even up to eighty-six feet, you can clearly see the stones on the bottom and even distinguish their colors. The local residents have also noted that, no matter how much you drink, this water does not weigh down your body, nor cause any harm, though it is unsuitable for washing wounds since it would prevent their healing.
Usually the Angara breaks up in the beginning of April; in 1739, for example, it went out the night of April 5. Both when it freezes and when it breaks up, two phenomena occur that constitute the biggest part of spring or fall weather. Before the river opens, Irkutsk is such a filthy place that you cannot proceed on foot without getting horribly dirty and at every step running the risk of losing shoes or boots. As soon as the river breaks up, all the streets dry up and then remain clean.
The severest cold happens between Christmas and about the twentieth of January. After that, it is uncommonly warm and pleasant as long as ice is drifting in the river, but as soon as the Irkut freezes up,