Ourga can scarcely be called a city in the true acceptance of the term. Its Mongol name, “Ta Huren,” or “The Great Encampment,” better describes the huge cluster of tents that compose the Mongolian capital, dwellings precisely similar in shape and size to those in the desert, save that here they are surrounded by rough wooden palisades, eight to ten feet in height, as a protection against the thieves and marauders who in the caravan season nightly infest the streets.

The population of Ourga, which is estimated at about 40,000, fluctuates a good deal. This is owing in a great measure to the nomad disposition of the inhabitants, who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, taking not only their goods and chattels, but also their house with them. With the exception of the Kootookta’s palace, an imposing edifice of Tibetan architecture, all white, gold and vermilion, like an ornament off the top of a twelfth-cake, there are but three brick houses in the place, residences of Russian tea-merchants, of whom, when we passed, there were seven residing in Ourga. These, with the half-dozen Europeans stationed at the Consulate, mid-way between Ourga and Maimachin, formed the entire European population of the capital of Mongolia.

Notwithstanding, Ourga is of no little importance as a trading centre, for it is the only stage in the tea-carrying trade between China and Russia, while it exports large quantities of hides, timber, and clothing throughout Mongolia. Ourga is the Mecca of the Mongol, and the distances travelled by the faithful for the privilege of gazing upon the features of their living god, the Kootookta, are sometimes incredible. Pilgrimages are made from Manchuria, nine hundred miles away, and a man arrived, while we were there, from the borders of Tibet, having accomplished the distance across the desert, a great part of it sandy waste, alone and on foot. The journey from Ourga to Lassa (Tibet) is made in great state by the Grand Lama of Mongolia on the death or transmigration of a Kootookta, to procure another from the “Dalai Lama” of Tibet. There are but two living deities in Mongol Buddhism. The Dalai Lama of Lassa, and Kootookta of Ourga. It is for this that the Mongolian capital is looked upon as the second sacred city of the world, Lassa, the capital of Tibet, being the first.

The present Kootookta is about eighteen years of age, lives, like the Emperor of China, a life of the strictest privacy, and is only exhibited to the faithful by the Lamas or priests in charge on very rare occasions. Though worshipped as a god, he is allowed no voice in the government of the country, which is entrusted to two viceroys, a Mongol prince and a Manchu Tartar from the court of Pekin. The latter keeps an eye on the sacred youth, and sees that he does not meddle with state affairs. Presumably also (as no Kootookta has ever been known to live over the age of twenty) attends to other little matters when the proper time comes.

We had left the caravan at nine o’clock. It was past ten when, passing the Chinese town of Maimachin, the green roof and gilt balls and crosses of the Russian Consulate came in sight, a handsome stone building, in a spacious garden, just outside the tented city. The day was bright and beautiful; as we galloped through the crisp clear air, our ponies’ feet rattling along the sound and springy turf, our spirits rose at the thought that our desert journey was really over, that the neck of the voyage was (as we thought) broken. Ignorance, in this case, was indeed bliss!

At a short distance, Ourga presents the appearance of some huge fair. The white tents, blue and gold temples, and gaudy prayer-flags, gave us at first sight a pleasing impression of the place, which was, however, speedily dispelled on closer acquaintance with its dismal-looking streets, deserted save by beggars and dogs, and the hideous customs practised day and night by its strange population.

We soon reached the gates of the Russian Consulate, and I pulled the heavy, clanging courtyard bell with a sense of relief, thinking that a few minutes more would see us consoled for the discomforts of our thirty days’ journey with a brandy-and-soda, or its Russian substitute in the cool, shady reception-room, a glimpse of which we had caught while riding past the front of the house. A stalwart Cossack answered our summons. He was a rough, surly fellow. My knowledge of the Russian language is limited, but I knew enough to understand that M. Shishmaroff was away——that no one knew when he would return——and that he should have the letter (which in despair I was holding out) when he did. With this information, given with scant courtesy, the military janitor calmly proceeded to shut the door in our faces. Luckily for us, however, the arrival of a third party on the scene completely changed the aspect and position of affairs, the new comer being no less than our sulky friend’s wife, a burly, rosy-cheeked female of some forty summers, whose face it did one good to see after the bilious, yellow-cheeked dames of China and the Gobi. There was no mistaking this one——Russia——and Northern Russia too, was written in every line of it. She was indeed a friend in need. It was fortunate for us that the altercation at the gate had become loud enough to attract her attention, causing her to desist from the occupation she was engaged in, of washing her last-born at the pump, and hasten down to the gate to see what was the matter. Whether our personal appearance or the prospect of sundry kopeks did it, I know not, let us hope the former. The fact remains that in less time than it takes me to write it, she had hurled her lord and master on one side, flung wide open the gates, and led our ponies in. She then signed to us to dismount, and, taking us each by the hand, led us into a cottage situated in the centre of the courtyard, and about fifty yards distant from the Consulate.

The lady evidently, to use a vulgar term, wore the breeches, for the partner of her joys and sorrows offered no resistance whatever when she ordered him, after unsaddling and watering our ponies, to set off at once with my card and the letter of introduction to where M. Shishmaroff was staying on a shooting excursion some thirty versts off. The poor wretch went like a lamb, and I must own it was with some satisfaction that we saw our quondam enemy ride through the green gates and into the blazing sun while we sat in the cool red-tiled cottage, comfortably discussing a dish of ham and eggs and home-made bread, washed down by copious libations of quass, and topped up by a bowl of rich thick cream, which the good soul insisted on our drinking, whether we liked it or not. Think of this, O dyspeptics, and ponder when I add that we felt no ill effects. Such are the practical results of a month in the Gobi desert on the human frame and digestion.

The long sunny day wore slowly away. As we knew some hours must elapse before the sergeant could possibly return, Lancaster and I extended ourselves on many chairs, and with a box of excellent cigarettes (the sergeant’s) between us, settled down to a thoroughly lazy afternoon. The sensation of absolute quiet and rest was little short of delicious after the wear and tear we had been leading for nearly a month——days of dirt and discomfort, nights of sleeplessness and misery. It was worth all the hardship we had undergone to experience the sense of relief and rest that long, still summer’s day in the Russian Consulate at Ourga. It was hard to realize that one was still in the Chinese Empire. The clean cottage, with its cool red-brick floor, bright copper saucepans, chintz window-curtains, and flower-bedecked window-sills of to-day were such a contrast to the grimy smoke-discoloured yourts, stuffy, vermin-infested camel-carts of yesterday. I caught myself more than once wondering if the past voyage was not all a dream, from which I had awoke in some solitary wayside cottage in far-away England. The illusion was but slowly dispelled when waking from a somewhat heavy nap (for which the mixture of quass and cream was no doubt answerable), I found the goodwife bustling about among her pots and pans, two curly-haired, rosy-cheeked brats clinging to her skirts, and the kettle singing merrily on the hob.

The sergeant returned about six o’clock with a note from M. Shishmaroff, written in French, and begging us make ourselves at home in the Consulate till his arrival on the morrow, an invitation we were not slow to avail ourselves of. The caravan had by this time arrived, and we were able, after a delicious bathe, to get a complete change of clothes, a luxury we had not enjoyed for more than three weeks. We were one mass of bug and flea-bites from head to foot, but a little ammonia soon set this right. The portmanteaus, too, were swarming with camel-ticks, and the next morning was mainly devoted to fumigating and trying to get rid of these pests——no easy matter.

Though luxuriously furnished and fitted up with every modern appliance and comfort, the house of the Russian Consul at Ourga is a plain-looking stone building, with wings on either side, the one serving as a chapel, the other as quarters for the half-dozen Cossacks forming the Guard. The windows of the drawing-rooms looked on to a garden, spacious and well laid out. Roses, geraniums, heliotrope, mignonette, and other flowers grew in profusion along the borders of the neat gravel-paths, and round the little green wooden kiosk, where after dinner Lancaster and I drank our coffee and smoked cigarettes as we watched the sun set behind the sacred hills, and the white city grow grey in the dusk. A more picturesquely situated one can scarcely be imagined than Ourga, in the midst of a fertile green plain watered by the blue waters of the Tola, and surrounded by an amphitheatre of undulating wooded hills, conspicuous among them being the “Sacred Mountain,” with its dark fir-trees and little temples, where the buddhist hermits, tired of the pomps and vanities of the world, retire to spend their last days mortifying the flesh and turning prayer-wheels.

We went out before it grew quite dark, and had a look at the ponies. Both were enjoying the sweet fresh grass, and seemed as contented with their comfortable quarters outside as their masters were in. Little Karra, as soon as he saw us, gave a shrill neigh of welcome, and bucked away from us in a manner that speedily set my mind at rest on his account; while the gluttonous Chow never desisted for a second from the occupation that he was best fitted for, that of filling his inside. We passed the European cemetery on the way back, eight or ten roughly made graves, mere mounds of earth, with huge stones heaped on them to keep away the dogs. The crevices between were riddled with holes where rats had tried to get at the bodies. Only one grave boasted the smallest attempt at adornment, a white wooden cross with black letters, bearing the name and age of a young Russian girl who had died in Ourga a few weeks back. I could not help wondering if the poor child ever realized, during lifetime, that this lonely, neglected spot would ever be her last resting-place. The graves looked weird and uncanny in the dusk, and one was glad to leave the place and return to the Consulate; where, as we entered, we heard in the courtyard, the sharp, shrill words of command in Russian, as our friend the sergeant set the watch for the night. Even in the cosy, well-lit drawing-room it was hard to shake off the uncomfortable feeling of depression and undefined apprehension that never quite left one in Ourga. Whether it be the climate or surroundings of the place, I know not; but every European traveller who has visited the Mongolian capital mentions having experienced the same sensation.

M. Shishmaroff arrived next day, a spare, wizened little man about sixty years of age, clean-shaved, with long, wiry grey hair, and a complexion the colour of a walnut. Colonel Petroff, the commander of the Guard, a red-faced, burly Cossack officer, accompanied him. They had been away for a three days’ fishing expedition, and their baskets were laden with fine trout and “Tai-Ming” from the Tola. The latter is a species of large pike, but, unlike it, is caught only in running streams. It is delicious eating. Curiously enough, though this fish is caught throughout Siberia to the very foot of the Oural mountains on the Asiatic side, it is never found in European Russia.

Both our hosts gave us a true Russian welcome; and though the colonel spoke but few words of French, we mutually managed to supply by signs what we lacked in language. The Consul himself spoke French fluently. Although he had held the post he now occupied for more than twenty years, much of his early life had been spent in Central Asia, in the service of the Russian Government. “But I never wish to leave Ourga,” he said, when I one day casually remarked that the life must be rather a dull one for a man of his talents and culture. “I am passionately fond of my books. I enjoy the finest climate in the world. I am madly fond of fishing, and get as much as I want of the finest sport in the world in the Tola hard by. Above all, I am my own master, and as you English say, ‘Monarch of all I survey.’ What can a man wish for more?” And I could not but admit there was some truth in his reasoning.

The Cossack colonel was a character. I verily believe he slept in his uniform, spurs and all. His duties appeared light enough. It is not a great tax on a man’s energy to command and drill six men, yet was he by no means content with his lot. Often (after dinner) when the good old Consul had exhausted his Central Asian anecdotes, and retired to his books and fishing flies, our military friend would fling open his tunic, and, throwing himself at full length on an easy chair, bewail his fate, and curse the ill-luck that had ever brought him to Ourga. “What a place! What pigs, these Mongols!” he would cry in execrable French, at the same time pouring down draughts of fiery Vodka that would have made any one but a Russian purple in the face. “Ah! mes amis! you are fortunate, you go to Kiakhta! Beautiful Kiakhta! What fun! What gaiety! What women! Ah! mon dieu! Would that I could accompany you!” Occasionally, very late in the evening, he would pull out of his tunic and kiss with much effusion a tawdrily-coloured miniature of a lady with a countenance as of the rising sun, and what looked like two large black holes for eyes. “I shall marry her some day,” he would say, gazing pensively at the portrait, while his eyes filled with tears——and Vodka. “Some day, my little Olga, you will be mine.” I never interrupted our military friend’s rhapsodies, or inquired as to her stature, but, judging from length of face and size of feature, Olga must have been misshapen if she stood anything under six foot high in her stockings.

We rode through Ourga next day, and found it a dull, unpicturesque city. There are no shops or stalls in the streets, none of the colour and movement that make most Oriental places so picturesque. A more melancholy, depressing place I have seldom seen; one sees nothing on all sides but palisades about nine feet high, rough pine-tree stems, stuck into the ground close together, and thickly plastered together with clay. The dwellings of the inhabitants are almost entirely hidden by these rough wooden walls. The thousands of brilliantly coloured prayer-flags, covered with Mongolian and Tibetan characters, give a spurious look of gaiety to the place, which is soon dispelled upon looking around again at the silent, desolate-looking streets. The latter, though unpaved, were clean and regularly laid out, debouching frequently into open spaces of waste land, or squares. Erected in most of the latter were a number of open sheds, with what looked like huge wooden barrels inside them, but which we afterwards discovered were prayer-wheels, hollow cylinders filled with prayers and petitions to Buddha. We must have seen over a thousand of these scattered about Ourga, for public use. They varied considerably in size, from those ten to twelve feet high, great ponderous things that took three or four men to turn them, to others not longer than a man’s hand, affixed to the street corners. These wheels are never at rest, men and women pause, as they hurry along the streets, to give a turn to each as they pass them, and as one encounters one every twenty yards or so, the amount of prayers turned out during the day in Ourga must be something enormous. Prayer in Mongolia is all done by motive power, and we noticed water-wheels and windmills thickly covered with sacred characters. None of the people dreamt of passing one in the street without giving it a turn. Some seemed to make up praying parties; for we once saw two women and three men, grinding away at a big wheel near the Kootookta’s palace, for at least half an hour without cessation. Some of the more devout turned miniature wheels in the left hand, while they pushed round the bigger ones with the right.

Thoughts of death and of a future state are the chief topics of conversation in this weird city, and religious ceremonies and duties form the chief occupation of the inhabitants, who go about their business, in solemn silence and with long faces that contrast strangely with the gaudy dresses and ornaments in which they are clad. A Mongol may be as cheerful and boisterous as he pleases in the desert, but once in the capital he must put on his best clothes, and observe a reserved, silent manner in accordance with the solemn surroundings. Many of the women were beautifully dressed and covered with handsome gold and silver ornaments. They had in Ourga a curious way of dressing the hair, that we had not seen in the desert. A head-dress of solid silver, studded with coral and turquoise, fits flat, and closely to the head. From under this their hair was brought out at right angles to the head in a solid band about six or seven inches broad: This was kept stiff by a plentiful application of mutton fat and other substances, and kept out by three broad wooden bands. At the shoulders it was gathered up and allowed to fall down in front of each shoulder in a single plait. Their painted faces, flat noses, and beady black eyes, in conjunction with this strange head-dress, gave them a most grotesque appearance, and utterly spoilt any pretension to good looks they may have had, although with the exception of Tsaira, I did not see a single good-looking woman or girl throughout Mongolia. Ourga is said, notwithstanding, to be the most immoral city, of its size, in the world.

Perhaps one of the most curious characteristics of Ourga is the silence that reigns. There is here none of the hum or bustle usually found in a place where some thousands of human beings are gathered together. No sound, even at mid-day, breaks the solemn stillness but the eternal creak of prayer-wheels and tolling of deep-toned gongs, save when a discordant blast of horns announces the celebration of some ceremony at the Kootookta’s Palace, or a tea-caravan jingles and rattles noisily through the quiet streets and squares on its way to Siberia or China.

The chief products of Ourga appeared to be beggars and dogs. The latter are exceptionally large and ferocious, so much so that Europeans always ride when obliged to go into Ourga. On foot one stands a very fair chance of being torn to pieces by the huge, savage brutes, who do not, however, harm or take any notice of the natives. The beggars fairly swarm——loathsome, abject wretches, many of them covered with sores, and quite naked. Wet or dry, hot or cold, they live in the open, subsisting on alms, or whatever offal they can pick up. We saw two or three lying dead by the roadway. No one seemed to take any notice of the corpses save dogs and vultures. Thousands of the latter perpetually hover over Ourga, the largest I have ever seen, and as bold as brass. It is a common thing to see people returning from market have their provisions snatched out of their hands and carried off by the huge birds. I could not believe this, till I saw it myself. No one harms them. The first precept of Buddhism is “Thou shaft not kill,” and although this rule is sometimes broken in the desert, an infringement of it in the city of the Kootookta would meet with summary punishment.

The palace of the Kootookta and Lamasery or Buddhist monastery are the only buildings of any size or importance in Ourga. We managed to get permission, through M. Shishmaroff, from the Grand Lama of Mongolia to visit the temple attached to the palace. We were very curious to see the Kootookta himself, but one might as well have tried to gain admission to the presence of the Emperor of China. He was moreover absent on a pilgrimage to a mountain shrine, some hundred miles off, during our stay.

The temple itself is a whitewashed, wooden building, with a pink and blue striped dome, surmounted by a huge gilt ball. There are no windows. It was some time on entering before we could make out the huge figure of Buddha; for two guttering oil wicks only just made darkness visible. The idol, which is of gilt bronze, and represented seated, is one of the largest in the world. I could not ascertain its exact height, but we measured one of the hands, and found it six feet long, while the rest of the body is in the most perfect proportion. Surrounding it were five life-sized wooden figures in Mongol dress, which startled one not a little at first, they looked so like human beings in the dim light, their faces and hands being made of wax and painted flesh colour. Ranged round the walls from floor to roof were a thousand small gilt idols, each in its own glass-covered niche, while from the dome hung some twenty or thirty large silk prayer-flags beautifully worked with Tibetan and Mongolian characters in gold. Some were fairly rotting with age. At the right of the figure stood the Kootookta’s throne, a tawdry-looking light green erection thickly covered with ill-painted flowers and landscapes, like a shooting-gallery at a fair, which detracted not a little from the beauty of the place. We could not see the face of this huge figure, which was lost in the darkness high up in the dome, but M. Shishmaroff told us it is of great beauty. Where this huge figure was cast or how it ever got to Ourga, does not transpire. It is of enormous antiquity, and was placed there long before the “White Barbarian” ever set foot in these regions.

Two yellow-clad Lamas, with shaven heads and bare feet, came in as we were leaving, to trim the lamps and collect the alms and offerings that had been left at the feet of Buddha during the day. They seemed rude, ill-conditioned fellows enough, and by no means pleased to see us, nor did the rouble which Petroff gave them elicit anything but a sulky grunt of thanks. “Canaille va!” said the Cossack, with a fierce twist of his moustache, as we emerged into the open air, “we shall teach you a lesson some day,” a remark that set me thinking. There is probably no race so jealous of its religion and customs and so intolerant of a stranger’s interference as the Mongols. It was with the utmost difficulty that I managed to procure a small prayer-wheel about five inches long (although there were probably thousands of such in Ourga), and then only through the mediation of the Consul, to whom it was given, not sold to, by the owner. Though there are five or six of these miniature wheels in every tent, one never sees them exposed for sale, all being made in the Lama monasteries. It was getting dusk as we mounted our ponies to return to the Consulate. This seemed to be the favourite hour for prayer in Ourga, for the thirty or more large prayer-wheels in front of the temple were all in full swing, three or four men and women to each. The creaking and grinding of the spindles was deafening, while the two sloping wooden platforms in front of the palace, used for the purpose of public worship, were covered with prostrate forms at evening prayer.

The palace, an imposing brick building of Tibetan architecture, stands hard by the temple, with which it is connected by a covered way built to screen the Kootookta from the vulgar gaze, when he goes to his devotions or a council of Lamas. The residence of the human god is handsome, though somewhat gaudy, its white faÇades being picked out with blue, crimson, and gold. The approach is through two archways of Chinese architecture, at thirty yards’ interval, richly carved and coloured light green and vermilion. It is only in winter that the Kootookta lives in the capital. In early spring he is taken in state by the Lamas to his summer palace, about five miles away, on the banks of the clear, swift-running Tola and under the very shadow of the sacred mountain. Here the time is spent in prayer and meditation till the return of autumn.

We rode past some tents pitched on the open space in front of the palace, an encampment of pilgrims which had arrived in Ourga the week before from Manchuria. One tent, that of their chief, was of green silk, and richly ornamented with gold hangings inside and out. They seemed cheery, good-tempered fellows, and gave us a pleasant “good night” as we passed them, seated outside their tents discussing the evening meal round their camp fires. Half a dozen camels and a couple of ponies formed their caravan. They had taken more than three months to do the journey, and were setting out again to return home the following day.

The day had been close, and a shower of rain towards sundown had made the atmosphere steamy and depressing, as we rode slowly home through the twilight to the Consulate. It was Petroff who first called my attention to a faint sickly odour I had noticed on and off all the afternoon during our peregrinations, a hot pungent smell as of decaying matter, which I had detected in my bedroom at the Consulate the day before, and which seemed to pursue one everywhere in and about Ourga. “You had better light a cigarette,” said the colonel, offering me his case. “It is always worse on these damp evenings.”

“Do you mean to say the Consul has not told you of our Golgotha,” he continued, as soon as we were fairly alight, in reply to my innocent query of how “it” was occasioned. “Why, it is the sight of the place. There is just time before dinner; we will ride home that way.”

I was no longer surprised after my visit to “Golgotha,” as Colonel Petroff facetiously termed the place where hundreds of corpses lay rotting above ground, that the city of Ourga did not smell as sweet as one could wish. My only surprise is, after visiting the spot in question, that plague is not always raging in a city where the inhabitants never dream of burying their dead, but carry them to a spot not three hundred yards from the gates, and there let them slowly decompose in the open air.

It would be impossible to imagine a more horrible spectacle than met our eyes on arriving at Golgotha, an open space or cleft between two low green hillocks just outside Ourga, a valley literally crammed with corpses in every stage of decomposition, from the bleached bones of skeletons that had lain there for years, to the disfigured, shapeless masses of flesh that had been living beings but a few days or hours ago. The moon shed a pale, unearthly light over the grinning skulls and grey, upturned faces of the dead, some of whom lay stark and stiff just as they had been left by their friends, others with their blue shrouds ragged and torn, with disfigured faces and twisted limbs, lying in the horribly grotesque positions in which the dogs or wolves had dragged them. Near us was the body of a woman that had lain there but a few hours, Petroff said, judging from the clean and untorn appearance of her shroud. A little further off a number of huge dogs were fighting and snarling over the remains of a child. Overhead great carrion birds were flapping their huge black wings, occasionally swooping down, with a hoarse croak, to bury beak and talon in some newly arrived corpse. The very ground we trod was composed of human bones which crunched under our ponies’ feet as we rode a short distance up the narrow, ghastly defile. The stench was awful. I can never think of the place even now without a shudder, and devoutly wish I had never seen it.

A Mongol when ill has but a poor chance of recovery in Ourga. He had far better be alone and deserted in the plains than handed over to the tender mercies of the Death Lamas. There is a house or shed in Ourga near the Lamasery specially set apart for the dying, for it is considered the worst possible luck for a Mongol to die in his own tent. The dwelling, should this occur, is looked upon as accursed for evermore, and its inmates shunned like lepers by their neighbours. Thus it frequently happens that a poor wretch is bundled off without ceremony to the “dying shed” long before there is any need for it. As the “Death Lamas,” who receive him, do everything for the cure of his soul and nothing for the good of his body, the invalid has a bad time of it. It is not considered the proper thing to leave the “Death Chamber” alive, and few do so, however slight their ailment when they are once admitted. We tried hard, but were not allowed to enter the sacred precincts, nor is any one who is not of the Buddhist faith and in extremis. The outside world is therefore ignorant of the rites and ceremonies practised therein by the Lamas, but the tortures suffered by the unhappy patients is pretty apparent to any passer-by, judging from the groaning and moaning that we heard issuing from this gruesome dwelling. When dead, everything the patient possesses becomes the property of the Lamas who have attended him. He is stripped naked, wrapped in a coarse blue cotton shroud, and given up to his friends, who bear him away to Golgotha, and there leave him to the mercy of the elements, dogs, and vultures. Instances have been known of men and women recovering and returning from the ghastly spot to their homes. The Mongol is, at any rate, free from an evil which always more or less threatens us of superior civilization——that of being buried alive.

I had not much appetite for dinner that evening, a meal we always partook of strictly À la Russe, which means, literally speaking, any amount of rich, greasy food, but no drink to wash it down with. However thirsty one might be, wine, beer, and water were tabooed from the dinner and breakfast table. Each guest had his small liqueur-glass, but no tumblers, or wine-glasses. In front of the Consul stood a miniature battery of Vodka, KÜmmel, and brandy bottles, and on these he rang the changes, replenishing our glasses with the contents of one or the other till the close of the meal, when the hissing Samovar was brought in and tea brewed. Our mouths by this time resembled a burning fiery furnace, and one was glad of a draught of the cup that cheers, hot and unrefreshing as it was. Sometimes “Koumiss,” or fermented mares’ milk, was handed round, a drink of which the colonel and Consul partook largely, but the violent attack of indigestion that half a glass brought on deterred me from ever drinking the vile stuff, which tastes exactly like butter-milk gone bad twice. It was not till bedtime that we were really able to slake our thirst with a cool draught of our own whisky and water from the bedroom decanter. This strange custom seemed to prevail throughout Siberia. Thirst is a sensation apparently unknown to Russians, and I never saw either the Consul or Petroff drink wine except when once, after a more than usually late night, the latter opened a bottle of champagne the following morning in our honour, and to drink to his speedy union with the fair Olga.

We visited Maimachin the following day. Kiakhta and other frontier-towns all have their Maimachins, a name derived from two Chinese words signifying “Maima,” trade, and “Ching,” town, for it is here that the Mongols purchase their stores, clothing, and provisions. Although distant only a mile from the capital, there are probably no two places in the world so utterly different in appearance and character as these. Of the ten thousand inhabitants, eight thousand at least are Chinese, merchants of various kinds, and all men. There is not a Chinese female of any sort or kind in the place, for the latter are forbidden by the laws of their country to accompany their husbands or male relatives into Mongolia, or indeed to go anywhere north of the Great Wall of China. The consequence of this is that many of the Maimachinites have intermarried with Mongol women, a circumstance that debars them from ever again entering the Chinese empire without special permission from the Court of Pekin.

Maimachin is a neatly-built town enclosed in a brick-battlemented wall about fifteen feet in height. The streets were, like those of all Chinese cities, abominably dirty, but it presented for all that a very favourable contrast to sad, sombre Ourga. The houses are of brick for the most part, well-built, substantial dwellings with gardens and courtyards, while on the outskirts of the city trees (planted by the ever-industrious Chinaman) and carefully tended market and flower gardens relieve the monotony of the dead green plain. A Chinaman much resembles a Frenchman in one respect; put him into a swamp in Mid-Africa, and he will make his immediate surroundings ornamental, or at any rate as pretty as circumstances will allow.

The Temple of Confucius at Maimachin was a pleasant contrast to the gaunt, whitewashed structure of Buddha at Ourga. Though much smaller in dimensions, it was a model of symmetry and beauty, and embellished with carvings and sculpture which it seemed a sin to have covered with the eternal gold and vermilion so dear to every celestial’s heart. In front was a little courtyard overhung with weeping willows and paved with smooth grey tiles, round the edge of which ran broad beds of roses and mignonette, while in the centre a fountain plashed lazily into a basin of cool green water, covered with clusters of great white water lilies. Hung around the roof of the temple were hundreds of small gilt bells with sails attached to their clappers, which at the slightest breath of air produced a sweet musical sound. It was a relief to sit in this pretty cool retreat and forget for a while the dirty, dismal city with its leprous population and unburied dead not two thousand yards off!

Moses and Co. had only contracted to bring us as far as Ourga, so we now set about getting fresh camels for the journey to Kiakhta, a distance of over two hundred miles. We were not anxious to prolong our stay in Ourga. One walk through the city had more than satisfied our curiosity, and the unsavoury whiffs that came in at our open windows whenever the wind was blowing in from the direction of Golgotha, only made us the more anxious to hasten our departure, notwithstanding the kind and pressing invitation of our good-natured friend and guide, Petroff, to stay a few days longer and have some trout-fishing, a sport I have never been particularly fond of, though I believe it is to be had in perfection in the waters of the Tola, judging from the large basketsful M. Shishmaroff brought in almost daily.

We procured camels with less difficulty than I had anticipated, though not without a good deal of haggling and discussion as to price with the greasy old Mongol whose property they were. The old robber insisted on payment beforehand, and insisted on its being made in brick tea, which gave us an enormous amount of trouble and annoyance. We managed it at last, with the aid of M. Shoolingin, a Russian tea-merchant, but the calculation entailed a consumption of tea, Vodka, and cigarettes that gave us a headache for two days afterwards! It took us nearly three hours to convert our Kalgan bills into the requisite amount of the awkward countersome material that passes current for coin in Ourga and throughout Mongolia. The tea is of the coarsest kind. After being submitted to a pressing and drying process, it is cut up into bricks of 25 cents, 50 cents, and $1 value. The latter are nearly two feet long. The cost of the camels for our journey to Kiakhta was $35, so the old Mongol had to call in two others to help him carry away his spoil, under which he staggered away with a grin and a leer that made us doubt whether he had not swindled us, which we afterwards discovered he had to the amount of some $15. Bank-notes have lately been introduced by the Russian tea-firms in Ourga, representing so many bricks of tea each. These would do away with much of the difficulty attending the carting about of the present heavy, clumsy currency, but the natives will have nothing to do with them.

We left Ourga at 5 a.m. on the morning of the 3rd of August. Our caravan was now considerably reduced in size, for it needed but four camels (besides the two for the carts) to carry our few remaining stores. Early as it was, the Consul and Petroff were at the gate to bid us good-bye. The poor colonel looked very sad and down in the mouth. He was thinking, no doubt, of Olga, for whom he gave me innumerable tender messages. As they were confided verbally, and in Russian, it is perhaps as well that I never made the acquaintance of the belle of “Beautiful Kiakhta.” She would have been somewhat confused at my interpretation of her fiancÉ’s messages, and might have taken his declarations of undying love and devotion for my own. As the caravan moved slowly out of the gate on the second stage of our weary journey, the guard gave us three hearty cheers, and we drank a final Vodka with Petroff, arranging to meet, if all went well, the following year in Petersburg, a place the gay, light-hearted soldier seemed far more suited to than the dreary desert-city in which we left him. Pleasing indeed was this our first experience of Russian friendship and hospitality, nor had we ever cause to alter our opinion. With all our vaunted hospitality, I doubt if even the English are not behind the Russians in these two qualities, which I have never seen so general as in Russia and Siberia.

A caravan of three hundred ox-carts laden with timber and furs passed the gates as we were leaving, going in the contrary direction to ourselves. They were bound for Dolonnor in Manchuria, a town, Petroff told us, they would be entering about the same date as we should be nearing the English Channel at Calais.

Our way lay straight through Ourga. I could not help wondering, as we passed Golgotha for the last time, and noticed the thick white steam rising from it, that the place is not one continual hotbed of cholera and typhus. Yet it is not so. The clear, dry, rarified atmosphere and hot sunshine in summer and severe frost and cold in winter do much to mitigate the unhealthy vapours and stench that constantly hang over the city. Ourga is as a matter of fact extremely healthy, and cholera is, and always has been, unknown in the capital of Mongolia.

Both our camel-drivers being Lamas, they asked permission to halt for a few minutes as we passed the Temple Gates, while a couple of rascally-looking priests came out and blessed the caravan, an operation which was witnessed with great interest by the bystanders, who abandoned their occupation of wheel-turning and came up and leisurely examined the inside of our carts, our clothes, boots, rifles, &c., with apparent interest. The ceremony of blessing us consisted in throwing a couple of gourds of arrack and some grains of millet over the leading and last camel, a proceeding that is supposed to ensure a rapid and prosperous journey. It was rather a failure in our case, for it took us exactly a week to get to Kiakhta, a voyage usually accomplished with ease in three days by the Russians at Ourga.

Three separate ranges of mountains lay between us and Kiakhta, one, the “Bain Gol” pass, so steep as to necessitate the using of bullocks to drag the huge unwieldy carts across, for the Mongolian camel has the greatest objection to pulling weights up-hill, be it ever so slight a gradient. Two broad and swift rivers, the “Kharra” and “Irul,” have also to be crossed, the former forded, the latter by ferry. Shishmaroff specially cautioned us not to attempt the passage of the Irul after dark, for the stream is dangerous owing to sunken rocks, and the ferry old and unsecure.

The going was very hard the first two days and the shaking in the carts far worse than anything we had yet experienced. To compensate us for the discomfort and fatigue, however, we passed through some of the loveliest mountain scenery I have ever seen. Game was abundant the whole way, hundreds of partridges (the sand-grouse is not met with here) and hares, with an occasional shot at a golden pheasant with which the dense forests abounded. We passed the second day a small pond or lake, alive with duck and sheldrake. Stopping the caravan for a few moments, we bagged a couple, and on the way back two couple of snipe from the marsh surrounding the water. Though we had to wade waist deep for nearly a quarter of a mile, it was worth the trouble. There must have been at least thirty duck on the pond, which was barely twenty yards wide.

We had now nothing to complain of with regard to excess of energy and activity on the part of our drivers. Our difficulty with the new Mongols was not to get them to stop, but to go on. The leader, a fat, stumpy old fellow, with eyes like an owl, slept calmly and peacefully on his camel’s back throughout the day, only to awake at the midnight halt from which hour, till we started again at six, he would devote himself to gorging, smoking innumerable pipes, and saying, or rather singing, his prayers, an operation that kept us awake the greater part of the night. I verily believe we went quite double the distance we should have done, owing to this old wretch’s sleepiness and idiotcy. Something was always going wrong. Water running short, packs falling off, the caravan filing quietly away in a direction totally different to that it should have taken, while the old fellow partook of nature’s sweet restorer, blissfully unconscious of our cries and threats. No amount of shouting would wake him——indeed, nothing short of pulling him off his camel. At such times he would look at one with an injured stare, shake himself into his seat, and go off again, only to fall asleep a few hundred yards further on, when the operation of pulling off had to be repeated. The second driver was, luckily, a bright, intelligent boy of about twenty, who saved things from going utterly to the bad. Had it not been for him, we should even now be vainly endeavouring to reach the Russo-Chinese frontier.

I do not think we got more than twelve hours’ sleep in all during the journey from Ourga to Kiakhta, and this was the greatest discomfort with which one had to contend. Even when, after an uninterrupted spell of hard work for twelve hours, the caravan halted at midnight till daybreak, sleep was often impossible from the very knowledge that in five hours’ at most one would have to be on the tramp again. Besides the hammering in of tent-pegs, chopping of firewood, and last, but not least, the semi-musical prayers of our somnolent driver often lasted till four or half past, and put sleep out of the question. A Mongol is never so wakeful and active as at night, and if he is musically inclined, always indulges this propensity in the darkness, when all right-minded people are courting the drowsy god. Expostulating was useless, as any one who has ever been brought in contact with this strange race will understand.

We were now a good deal bothered by mosquitoes and sandflies, an annoyance from which we had been free throughout Northern China, and the desert proper. Now, however, these pests attacked us night and day in myriads, and we suffered a good deal from their bites, which were unusually severe and poisonous.

Our younger camel-driver carried a very original prayer-wheel, a sort of miniature windmill let into the butt-end of his thick, heavy whip. When set going and held against the wind, this ingenious contrivance would spin away without cessation for hours together. He was a devout youth, and it was a long time before I could induce him to part with it, but love of filthy lucre finally overcame religious scruples, and I managed to buy it of him on arrival at Kiakhta for a couple of roubles, under the strictest injunctions not to tell the “Old Sheep,” as he irreverently termed the sleepy Lama.

We reached the banks of the Kharra at nine o’clock on the morning of the 6th of August. This river is a tributary of the Khon River, which has its source near the Kara Korum Mountains in central Mongolia, and after winding its course of nearly 700 miles, flows into the great inland sea of Lake Baikal, after watering the towns of Kiakhta and Selenginsk, where, however, it is not navigable. There was no ferry, but we managed to ford it pretty easily. The weather had been dry, and the stream, which in time of flood is rapid and very dangerous, was never above our girths the whole way across. The water was beautifully clear, with a shingly bed, and we took the opportunity of filling the water-casks, not without a good deal of opposition from the Mongols, notwithstanding that the water had been filthy ever since leaving Ourga. This extraordinary people seem to prefer drinking out of a stagnant pool or well, in which a dead sheep or camel has been soaking for days, to filling the casks out of a pure running stream. On the banks of the river were three dirty, dilapidated yourts, empty, the first signs of a habitation we had seen since leaving Ourga.

Lovely weather had favoured us till now; bright hot sunshine tempered with a cool fresh breeze. But it was too good to last. About four o’clock to-day, the bright blue sky became overcast, and half an hour later, down came the rain, and continued steadily, and without cessation, till 2 a.m. The roofs of our carts, warped and cracked by the heat of the sun, leaked like sieves. But the weather, rough as it was, did not in the least affect my driver’s somnolent propensities. I was awoke that night, about eleven, out of a fitful doze, by a crash, to find that we were crossing a steep, precipitous range of hills, and that my cart was balancing itself on one wheel, on the edge of a precipice, the bottom of which was invisible. I could pretty well gauge the height, though, by the sound of a torrent dashing and foaming over some rocks at least a hundred feet below. I was only just in time to catch hold of his nose-string, and wrench the camel back into safety. In another moment the whole caravan would have toppled over. It was the old story. The Lama had been asleep. This last straw was too much, and in a fit of ungovernable temper, I pulled the old wretch off his camel, and sent him sprawling on his back on the stony pathway. But he took it perfectly coolly, merely picking himself up without a word, and with the usual stolid stare of mingled surprise and annoyance, calmly proceeded to clamber up again. Five minutes more and he was as sound asleep as ever. What could one do with such a creature, but give it up in despair! I took the precaution, however, though it still poured with rain, of walking till daylight.

A bright sunny morning made up for the discomforts of the night, and we were able, while fires were being lit and tea prepared, to dry our clothes and mattresses in the sun, which as early as eight o’clock was too warm to be pleasant. The scenery throughout the day resembled one enormous deer-park. Grassy slopes, as smooth as a billiard-table, and every now and again large clumps of fir-trees, which grew so regularly, they looked as if art and not nature had placed them there; while on the horizon, green, undulating hills, covered with forests of dark pine-trees, cut the bright blue sky-line. The track occasionally led past clear broad sheets of water teeming with fish, occasionally through belts of copse-wood, of silver birch and hazel, the ground one blaze of hyacinths, wild roses, and pinks growing in the thick rich grass, with clear, narrow brooklets running here and there through the thick undergrowth. We saw a brace of pheasants in one of these woods, but too far off to get a shot. About mid-day we halted for dinner under a clump of fir-trees. The cattle grazing in the sunshine, the quiet stillness of the place, broken only by the droning of insects, and voices of children playing near some distant yourt, was intensely refreshing after our night of misery. What would not these hundreds of miles of splendid pasture be worth at home? No wonder the Mongols are a contented race with such land as this, and no rent to pay!

Four o’clock the following morning saw us at the foot of the mountain, to cross which we were to abandon the camels and take to oxen. Sylvia was despatched in quest of the latter, but did not return with them till nearly three o’clock the following afternoon. We thus had a delay of nearly twenty-four hours, but were not altogether sorry, for the shaking and jolting of the past two days made one glad of a rest. We encamped close to a limestone mountain, about five hundred feet high, from the summit of which a huge piece of rock, quite a hundred feet in height, had become detached, and crumbling away as clean as if cut with a knife, had fallen on to the caravan-track immediately below. It was six o’clock by the time we had got the bullocks in and commenced the ascent of the pass, which, gradual at first, became very difficult long before we reached the summit. One bullock was harnessed to the shafts, the other to the axle of the wheel, but so severe was the strain the ropes continually broke on the way up. The cart and pack camels were in readiness to take us on when we reached the other side. Though a distance of only five miles from where we encamped, they took nearly eight hours to do the journey.

The way lay at first through a narrow ravine thickly grown with pine and silver birch. Through the centre ran a clear running brook, plashing over limestone rocks and boulders, and almost hidden by ferns and wild flowers. Above us towered the almost perpendicular wall of rock that must be conquered before nightfall, if we wished to avoid camping out all night on some rocky ledge——not a pleasing prospect——for it was already bitterly cold out of the rays of the sun. I noticed here, growing in great luxuriance, a bright yellow poppy——a colour in which I had always imagined that flower was unknown. This part of the mountain also swarmed with enormous hares. We must have seen some thirty or forty, and could easily have bagged half a dozen, but Moses would not hear of it, or of our delaying the caravan for a moment to get out our guns. As the ascent was getting harder every moment, we did not argue the matter.

I think that was quite the worst bit of mountain work we did the whole journey. Every moment I thought the bullocks would give in, or the carts go to pieces. The boulders they had to get over, holes and watercourses to get out of, would have seemed incredible to any one unacquainted with Mongolian travel. On foot it was bad enough, and we were glad we had sent on the ponies, for it would have been impossible to climb and lead them as well. Every ten minutes or so a halt was made for a quarter of an hour. Thus we toiled on, till half-past eight o’clock, when we found ourselves on the summit, after four hours of as hard, physical work as I ever experienced.

The moon had now risen, which made the view from the summit very picturesque. Round us on every side stretched away chains of lofty mountains, their limestone peaks gleaming white in the moonlight, while a grey, flaky mist half hid the deep gorges of pine and fir-trees at our feet. A bright light shining out of the darkness in the distance showed where our camels awaited us on the plain——twelve hundred feet below. We rested for an hour, to give the bullocks breathing-time, and then commenced the descent. It was a weird scene. A Chinese lantern just sufficed to make darkness visible, and show that we had halted by the side of a huge cairn, about twenty feet high, formed of stones, bits of stick, mutton bones, and strewn here and there with bits of red, yellow, and white cloth covered with Tibetan and Mongol characters. As we left the spot, our Mongols, unable to find a stone, each picked up a branch of fir, and placed it reverently on the heap. These are looked on as offerings to the “God of travellers,” who protects the faithful from peril while on a journey. We reached the camels again at ten o’clock. One tael did not seem exorbitant for the hiring of six bullocks, and the services of three extra Mongols, for that was the sum Jee Boo told me he paid them, and they seemed quite satisfied. Probably the greater part of that found its way into our trusty interpreter’s pockets.

Our road was now clear to Kiakhta, and there were no further difficulties to be got over, excepting the Irul river——a broad, swift stream, the crossing of which is dangerous at certain seasons. Jee Boo, ever a Job’s comforter, told us that the natives reported heavy rains, and if such was the case, we should certainly have a tough job of it. But he had so often cried “Wolf,” we paid no heed to his statement.

We travelled on all night, halting at nine the next morning for tea and biscuits. Part of the work was very fatiguing, as we had to cross several miles of country thickly covered with huge mole-hills, over which the carts jolted terribly, for there was no beaten track. The shaking at last became so unbearable that we left the carts at 4 a.m., tired as we were, and walked till the morning halt. We passed, just after sunrise, a large wooden building, a monastery of Tibetan architecture, its white faÇades gaudy with blue and red stripes and a gilt cupola. As we passed, two or three Lamas came out and blessed the caravan in the usual manner, an operation which necessitated a stoppage of half an hour.

Nearly the whole of this day’s work was through deep, drifting sand——in many places over the axles. At mid-day there was not a blade of grass or vegetation to be seen. This part of the country was, in fact, far more like one’s idea of what a desert should be than anything we had come through in Gobi. In the midst of this sandy waste (about fifteen miles in length), we came to a green valley or oasis, fresh and beautiful. The descent to it (for it lay in a hollow whence not a particle of sand was visible) was about fifty feet deep. Grass grew luxuriantly here, and a clear brook of running water springing from Heaven knows where, ran the whole length of the defile into a small lake or pond at the end——a dark, shady pool fringed with willows, and covered with white, broad-leaved water-lilies. Wild flowers of all kinds covered the roadway, among them the forget-me-not and marguerites of a delicate mauve colour. Although the sun had been hot and scorching out on the sand, the air struck like a cold bath the moment we entered this fertile valley, but so damp was the atmosphere, that our clothes were wringing wet when we emerged at the other end. The mosquitoes and sandflies, too, were the largest and most venomous I have ever seen or felt, and our faces and hands so inflamed that we had to stop the caravan and bathe them with ammonia, which, however, did little good, for we got no sleep for twenty-four hours after. The bites took days to heal. Game of all sorts, duck, teal, and widgeon appeared to abound in this “sleepy hollow,” and we managed to bag a duck, which made a welcome addition to the usual menu of preserved meat and sardines.

The morning of the 8th August broke dull and lowering, and about mid-day a thin rain commenced falling, which by degrees increased to a steady downpour at 4 a.m. We were to reach the Irul river at about sunset, and, if possible, cross before dark, but felt, if Jee Boo’s prediction were true, that we should indeed have our work cut out. The woolly, grey clouds and leaden sky gave but little promise of a break in the weather. Our only prayer was that the wind might not rise, but in this we were also disappointed, for by the time we had reached the banks of the river, or rather the margin, for it had overflowed for a considerable distance, the sky was as black as ink, the rain coming down in sheets, and the wind blowing in violent gusts that threatened every moment to blow the carts clean over. To think of crossing that night would have been madness. To say nothing of the fact that another caravan was waiting to be ferried over before us, the ferryman would not answer for the strength of the rope holding out against the current and gale combined. Still, if the Gospodins liked, and did not mind risking it, the head man (who was a Bouriatte, and spoke Russian well,) would do what he could to get them over. The Gospodins, however, strongly objected to risking it, and determined to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances and the last half-bottle of whisky would permit, till morning.

I thoroughly enjoyed that night’s rest. Whether it was the consciousness that we had a really quiet night before us (I had given orders not to be “called” till nine), or the hot whisky and water, I know not, but I had not enjoyed such a night’s rest since leaving Pekin. I only woke once during the night, woke to hear the rain still pattering on the roof, and to find myself lying in the usual pool of water, while the wind still howled mournfully round the carts. The sight of the river dashing by in a sheet of white foam was not reassuring, but did not interfere with my slumbers, for rolling myself in sheepskins, I slept away peacefully till past nine o’clock the next morning, when Jee Boo opened the door to let in a bright flood of sunshine and the welcome news that the rain had ceased.

The stream was still swollen from the incessant rain; but the caravan that had encamped next us had crossed at daylight in safety, with the exception of the loss of one bullock. Our camels were taken to a ford about a mile up stream, and we preferred accompanying them to trusting ourselves to the rickety old boat and frayed, rotten-looking rope, for the new one had not yet arrived. The ferry itself did not look capable of carrying half a dozen men, much less a heavy, clumsy camel-cart. Arrived at the ford, however, the spectacle of the leading camel suddenly disappearing from view in a deep hole made us change our minds and return to the boat. The first cart had just been got in, and we leapt on board just as they were shoving off into the stream.

Little more than half way across, a huge snag or tree-trunk got entangled with the rope and impeded our passage. I thought it quite time to say my prayers, for, had the cart tilted over, we must have followed it. It was a trying moment. The deafening roar of the torrent, pale, scared faces of the Mongols, as they rushed to and fro screaming and yelling to each other, but doing nothing to lessen the strain on the rope, which, stretched to its utmost, threatened to snap every moment. At last one of the men, wiser and pluckier than the rest, rushed to the bows, and with a superhuman effort dislodged the heavy mass, and sent it tumbling away down-stream, and we forged slowly ahead again, with a sigh of relief, for I fully expected our last hour had come.

We walked up to the ford again while the other carts were being got over. About fifty or sixty bullocks belonging to a tea-caravan were being driven across by men and women who were pelting them with stones until they leapt into the torrent, to emerge half dead and prostrate from fright and exhaustion about two hundred yards lower down. Many of the caravan people were women, some young and good-looking, though their costumes were more scanty than elegant. One, a pretty, bright-eyed girl of about sixteen, took a violent fancy to my brown boots, and it was only with the greatest difficulty I could prevent her from cutting them off my feet. The caravan, laden with furs from Irkoutsk, was bound for Pekin, and would probably be returning four months later with tea to Kiakhta.

We left the Irul at mid-day. Travelling was now easier, and the jolting scarcely perceptible on the hard, gravelly track that leads from the banks of this river right into the town of Kiakhta. Although the country is uncultivated, the scenery we passed through would have compared favourably with the lovelier parts of Switzerland and the Tyrol. Green fertile plains surrounded by chains of undulating fir-clad hills, occasional belts of forest with flowers and ferns in profusion, bubbling waterfalls splashing down the hill sides, through the moss-grown, ivy-clad boulders, then through vast plains of pasture again——such was the scenery we passed through the day before reaching Kiakhta. There grew, also, throughout this region (I saw it nowhere else) a long-stalked, star-shaped, violet flower, with a strong scent of heliotrope. The air was full of the scent for miles around, and one could see great violet patches of it on the green plain, stretching away at intervals to the horizon on every side. I doubt if there is a country in the world where wild flowers grow so luxuriantly as in parts of Mongolia.

The succeeding day (August 10th) we got into a sandy region again, with intervals of grass plain. Some of the drifts being of great depth, the camels had a bad time of it, and suffered severely from the heat. Poor little Karra could scarcely stagger along, and had Kiakhta been a couple of days further, I doubt if he would ever have reached Siberia. Lancaster’s cart seemed under a curse; for to-day, the driver being, as usual, asleep, the near wheel ran up a high sand-hillock and upset the whole machine, Lancaster being asleep inside at the time. It was luckily deep sand, or it must have been a nasty fall. It was fortunate, too, our journey was over, for the camel, falling under the shaft, had split it clean in two. I firmly believe the Mongol would have been sent to his fathers, had a revolver been handy, and I had the greatest difficulty in preventing my friend from going for him with the broken shaft.

About four o’clock a glittering speck on the horizon attracted our attention, which an hour later proved to be the spire of Kiakhta Cathedral. By six o’clock we were full in sight of the town of Maimachin, the Chinese settlement, its pagodas and quaint architecture standing out in striking contrast to the Russian cathedral, with its golden dome, the European stone-built houses, and regular streets and squares of Kiakhta. Skirting the wooden walls surrounding Maimachin, we find ourselves on a broad, level piece of ground about six hundred yards broad, with, on the right hand, a guard-house and high wooden gates, surmounted by the Imperial Eagle, while to our left the Chinese flag, hoisted on to a long red pole, floats in front of the governor of Maimachin’s residence. We are standing on neutral ground, and in another minute have passed the Cossack, who from the depths of a black and white sentry-box, eyes the caravan with a stolid, indifferent expression, but, curious to relate, does not ask for our passports. The first stage of our journey is over. We are in the Russian Empire.