has rapids, here called shiveri, that you have to pay close attention to going up- or downriver. The Angara also divides into protoki or channels, forming big and small islands here and there.
Both Lake Baikal and the Angara are surrounded by tall, rugged cliffs, decreasing in height and ruggedness as they approach Irkutsk; just before Irkutsk they become lower on both sides, constituting the most pleasant landscape you can imagine. In this respect, the Siberian Cossacks’ natural intelligence shown by their sensible choice of this place—as well as of Yeniseysk and Tomsk—has to be admired. You almost come to believe that they had all the necessary architectural, mathematical, and physical reasons for establishing a town on a list before their eyes and followed them. To be sure, from Nikolskaya Zastava to Irkutsk—that is, a hundred kilometers downriver, on either side of the Angara—there is no place as suitable a location for a town as the one where it was built. For immediately above Irkutsk, at the place called Krest3 not far from the church built in honor of the Trinity, the mountains on both sides of the Angara hug the banks, leaving—much to the regret of the town’s residents—no suitable room for grain fields or a pretty village or estate. If the Angara’s dammed-up waters had not turned the few level places into bogs as well as calm lakes, the residents feel that the trip to Nikolski would be ever so much more pleasant and the area would have been better cultivated. As it is, there are only huts built of necessity and named after the merchants who built them. Still, the ample scenery and images inspire the viewers to utmost delight.
The region around the outlet4 of the Angara is above all worth noting. Around Listvenishnoe Zimov’e, seven kilometers from where the Angara flows out of the lake, tall, forested mountains form a semicircle like an amphitheater. In the middle before the outfall, an imposing rock rises out of the water, thirteen feet tall and twenty-one feet wide, called Shamanski kamen, Shaman’s Rock, which the Buryats and Tungus venerate, even considering it divine, and they habitually swear on it and are afraid of it as if it were God himself. They will rather admit any guilt than go there to kiss it. It is less respected by the gulls, who have completely painted it white with their excrement. At that point, the river is very fast and the noise so overpowering [In text, prächtig, dazzling; we assume Steller meant mächtig, mighty.] that nobody is able to understand another’s word. It is also dangerous to get there and then only possible in small boats. Among the rocks are field stones, pieces of wood, and rags that the natives [In text, heathens; replaced with natives where appropriate] have thrown there as offerings. The rock itself is a coarse, blackish-gray sandstone mixed with spar. I am sending a piece of this nature-made idol to the Kunstkammer as a testament to heathen foolishness, though I do not know which of the god’s members it resembles.
To the right side of the Angara’s source above the lake, approximately forty kilometers from Nikolski, the eternally snow-covered Tunkinski Range is visible, with the tallest mountains on the whole lake and among those I’ve ever seen anywhere. They are visible though only in clear weather not far from Tulun, the first place in the Irkutsk district, three hundred kilometers from town. From the middle of the area opposite Medvedev’s Church, you can see between the mountains toward the source of the Angara and the Tunkinski Range for over a hundred kilometers, which reveals that Irkutsk was built in a direct line from the source of the Angara though the river has many bends. Below Ilimsk where the Ilim River flows into the Angara from the left, the Angara loses its name and becomes the Tunguska; from then on till it flows into the Yenisey, sixty-seven kilometers from the town of Yeniseysk at Tunginskoi Ostrog, it is known as the Tunguska. Downriver, the Tunguska has many porogi or rapids that cause considerable dangers and costs for the merchants. These rapids are clearly formed by the cliffs that extend underwater into the river. Nine of these are especially big and dangerous. The first is called Strelovskoi Porog, seventy-one kilometers from the town of Yeniseysk, ten before the Tunguska joins the Yenisey; the second is Murskoi Porog; the third Kasina Shivera [waterfall]; the fourth Aplinskoi Porog; the fifth, Shamanskoi Porog, is called that because a shaman fell in there and broke his neck. The sixth is called Dolgoi Porog, the seventh Padunskoi Porog because it is very steep and precipitous. The eighth, Pianoi Porog [the Drunken One; WH, Anm. 58], has its name from a plant that makes people drunk, of which Dr. Gmelin will give extensive information; the ninth is called Pochmel’noi Porog [R, Hangover Rapids], and I could say more about it if I didn’t know that Professor Müller has described all you need to know in the greatest of detail. While the water around Irkutsk is very clean, it gradually becomes less so, mixed with diverse kinds of pollution the closer it gets to the Yenisey.
The fish in the Angara are as follows: common sturgeon [R, oseter; Acipenser sturio], sterlet [Acipenser ruthenus]5 and starry sturgeon [In text, Schebriga; best guess Acipenser stellatus; WH, Anm. 65]. But these fish are never caught below Bratskoi Ostrog where the Ilim flows into the Irkut even though they are numerous in Lake Baikal because they are used to swimming upstream and not downstream. Siberian taimen [Hucho taimen] and sig [common whitefish] sometimes swim up the Irkut into Lake Baikal, but as soon as the Irkut freezes up, not a single one of these fish is to be seen because the sig in Lake Baikal [Baikal Lake sig, Coregonus lavaretus baicalensis, best guess] do not swim downstream in the Irkut. Sharp-snouted lenok [Brachymystax lenok], grayling [Thymallus thymallus, “Siberian Fish,” or T. arcticus; Bond, pers. comm., May 1991], Eurasian dace [R, elets, Leuciscus leuciscus, best guess, “Siberian Fish”], species of roach [in text, sorogi], plotva [R, common roach, Rutilus rutilus, “Siberian Fish”], pizda [R, Pizda ryba; bullhead, best guess; WH, Anm. 75], northern pike [Esox lucius L.; WH, Anm. 76; see ch. 5], and omul [Lake Baikal omul, Caregonus migratorius, of which there are four to five subpopulations in Lake Baikal; since 2004 listed as endangered; “Fishes: Baikal Omul,” Baikal.ru] are sometimes caught around the solstice. The omul is native only to Lake Baikal, being occasionally swept out of the lake with the current. Below Balaganskoi Ostrog in the upper regions of the Angara and in Lake Baikal, there are no burbot [Lota lota], perch [species of Perca], or Eurasian ruffe, the reason for which I have given above.
Most of the fishing in the Angara takes place in spring and fall; in winter people make do with frozen or salted fish. It is almost a hallmark of Irkutsk that in the morning or evening you almost always see people in the street carrying a string of Arctic grayling in their hand. In spring, the fish are full of worms and lice, which I have extensively described in my Catalogus insectorum. In some places, like below the Voznesenski Monastery, this river is bottomless and never freezes. Elsewhere I will describe the kind of villages, landed estates, and farms—in this country called zaimki [small settlements in Siberia with just a few houses; translated as village when not used as part of a proper name; WH, Glossar]—as well as the zimovia or single huts found on the road on both sides of the Angara. The Irkut, the other river that flows into the Angara across from the city, is almost as wide as the Angara; in addition, it is very deep and rather muddy in some places. I shall describe its course, as well as its banks and the rivers flowing into it and the settlements built on it, in a special treatise [No proof such a document exists; WH, Anm. 85].
The Ushakovka, or Ida River, which originates close to Lake Baikal between mountains not far from the source of the Golousnaya, is no more than 70 to 105 feet wide and flows into the Angara, approximately fifty kilometers from its source, close to and below the town—that is, between the town and Monastery Village, which is located on a hill and contains a nuns’ convent. The Ushakovka is named after the man Ivashka Ushakov, who first built a mill on its bank. These days this mill belongs to the widow of Ivan Pivovarov and generates an annual income of five hundred rubles. The Ushakovka’s bottom is rocky, the gravel in it red and ferrous. Iron used to be smelted from bogs along this river. Nowadays this iron is left lying by the wayside since it is friable due to all the sand. Ten kilometers from the mill on a hill surrounded by boggy areas, Pivovarov’s widow has built an estate or zaimka, and about forty or fifty kilometers from town live promyshlenniks who hunt Siberian stags or iziubri [Cervus elaphus; WH, Anm. 94; common name is red deer], moose [Alces alces],
