ABSTRACT
As the Old Rite Archpriest Avvakum came upon Lake Baikal during his exiled travels in seventeenth-century Siberia, he was deeply struck by the beauty and bounty of the lake.
I have wandered over the face of the earth 20,000 versts and more, but never have I seen [high mountains such as these]. On their summit are tents and earthen huts, portals and towers, stone walls and courts, all neatly fashioned. Onions grow on them and garlic, bigger than the Romanov onion, and exceeding sweet to the taste; there also grows wild hemp, and in the gardens fine grass and exceeding fragrant flowers, and there is great quantity of birds – geese and swans that fly over the lake like snow. And there are fishes – sturgeon and trout, starlet and salmontrout and whiting and many other kinds; it is fresh water and in that mighty ocean lake there are sea-calves and great sea-hares. I saw none such during all the time I was living on the Mezen; and the fish in it are of a great weight, the sturgeon and salmon-trout are exceeding fleshy – they are not for frying, for it would be naught but fat. And all this has been fashioned by our sweet Christ for man, so that, with a mind at last at rest, he might give praise to God.
