The Russian road to China

THE CITY OF THE REBORN GOD

THE murmur of many voices pierces the blanket over your head. Sleepy-eyed in the warmth, you peer out from the chrysalis of coverings to watch the people moving about. Alexsimevich has extricated himself from the mound which he constructs nightly on the floor, out of luggage-bags, felt mats, rugs, and overcoats. Under all the heaped wrappings that he uses in the icy Mongol tents, he has camped and slept close up against the white wall of the oven. Truly the Siberian is brother to the salamander. He pulls on now his big felt boots and runs a pocket-comb through his beard.

The wife of our host, come to the door for a survey, notes progress and returns to the female region. The Hazan Varlakoff, gray-bloused and wearing deerskin boots, enters next. He lights his first cigarette; his wife with the bowl of sugar and the plate of bread follows. She has gotten up earlier than her husband, so she is several cigarettes ahead, but he is cutting down the lead.

Perhaps one had better get up one’s self. It is an easy operation here. “Getting up” consists in emerging from the rolled blankets and stretching. “Dressing” means pulling on boots. One can wash over in the corner, where the brass can lets out a trickling stream of cold water when the needle-valve underneath is pushed up.

The samovar hums on the red cotton cloth of the table. Varlakoff moves along to make room. From the little pot of infused tea your glass is partly filled; then you place it under the spigot for hot water, and the beverage is ready for sipping. No lemons are here, as in Russia. In a few Chinese shops one can buy spherical citrons, but they are like unripe oranges, and are a luxury as great as pineapples in old New York.

A wool-buyer from Kiahta reaches for the bowl of broken loaf-sugar, and holds it for you to choose the piece whose size pleases best. The housewife comes from the kitchen over by her oven-door, bringing some crestfallen cake which she has made in your honor.

“Kuchete! kuchete!” she commands, arms akimbo, puffing contentedly on her cigarette.

We revel in the luxuries of Varlakoff’s room; warmth such that we may take off the cumbersome outer coats; chairs to sit upon, instead of crouching cross-legged; hot samovar-made drinks, and a chance to wash in water. The latter is a privilege which can be appreciated only after a period of ablutions in lukewarm tea. We stretch out and bask and sip, and whiff papirosi in epicurean idleness.

As we luxuriate, one by one the neighbors of the Russian colony come in, to hear the news of Kiahta from Alexsimevich. The expedition has become part of the gossip-transportation system. Half the population of Kiahta must have sent messages here,—half the Russian traders in Urga have come to receive them. First, there is the general news dispensed into the expectant ears of the group at Varlakoff’s. Alexsimevich is for an hour the cynosure. Questions and answers flash back and forth, going off sometimes explosively like fireworks. Then follow the special events and the individual messages. At last these are all detailed. Now come invitations from various men to visit their houses “Will the gaspadine come?”—“The gaspadine must see the city.”—“Da! da!” echoes the group.

Varlakoff goes out for his stick and overcoat. The wool-merchant gets into his fleece-lined shuba. He achieves the feat by the usual Siberian method. Putting the garment over his head, he pushes his arms through the sleeves, and gradually struggles and writhes up into it as one gets into a wet bathing-suit. Alexsimevich finishes his fourth glass of tea, lights one of the Hazan’s cigarettes, and worms his way also into his deerskin greatcoat. Then out we go into the bright sunlight and the snow-covered streets.

The houses of the Russian quarter of Urga were only glimpsed in the dusk of last night. We have daylight upon them now. Squat whitewashed buildings they are, with neatly paned windows and big square chimneys. Across the mounds and hillocks of a broad street is the one-storied Russian Club, where one may drink vodka, play billiards or cards, and while away the winter evenings. Further on is a row of shops. The bearded owners stand behind their counters, dressed in belted Mongol shubas and Russian fur caps. The doors to all the shops are open, that the Mongols, perplexed with knobs, may not take their trade elsewhere. Enameled kettles are hanging in festoons down the walls. The shelves are crowded with bolts of vivid-colored cotton cloths to be sewed into shubas by the Mongols who ride in to buy. There are big cases of sweetmeats, Moscowski caramels, acceptable offerings to the grotesque dokchits on the family shrines. Russian monopoly tobacco is there, in stamped paper packets for the delectation of Muscovites and Buriats who have the taste and the means, and villainous South-China tobacco and snuff for native purchasers. One can get vodka almost as bad as that of Siberia, and far cheaper, for it is compounded by a local distiller who rejoices in an excise-less market. Foreign brandies and wines fill big walls of shelves.

“Zdravstvouitie!” one of the merchants calls, hailing our party.

“It is Vassili Michaeloff, old friend of mine,” says Alexsimevich. “Let us go in.”

We enter and are led back into the private part of the house.

“Chai!” shouts the host to somebody behind the oven.

“Haracho,” comes the answer.

We all sit down. If any purchasers drift into the shop, they can wait until we get through our visit, or they can go down the line. For wherever the Eagles are planted, the Russian joyfully drops his business to entertain a friend. At the call of “tea” the shovel goes into the ditch, the ledger onto the shelf, the pen into the potato. If “chai” interferes with business, cut out business. Nor does it matter in the least that we have just had breakfast; by the rule of etiquette we must be entertained. “Tea” consists first in a ceremoniously clinked toast drowned in vodka. Then appears the samovar in charge of the woman of the house, the glasses, and the sugar. Next follow the cigarettes. The talk is animated, for its local history absorbs each little world. The fact comes out that the cousin of Michaeloff has bought a new pair of horses for a hundred roubles. The price, the quality of the animals and of the man, all go into the crucible. Kiahta beer arrives as the conversation turns to the death of one Ivan Vladimiraef, which it is agreed was not unnatural, since he had reached the age of ninety-odd years. Still the provisions come. The good wife brings in a heaping plate of lard-impregnated Hamburger steaks, called “cotlet,” which Alexsimevich attacks as if his last meal were half a day instead of half an hour distant. Other bottles accumulate to help out the dwindling flagon of vodka. We enter upon Château Yquem, Pomeranian, and Caucasian claret. Then cakes are set out, and more tea, and finally a quart bottle of champagne.

Alexsimevich stands to his guns like the 38th Siberians at Tien-tsin. But it is hard for any one of less rigorous training in this sort of thing to hold even the straggler’s pace at nine o’clock in the morning. Mentally we hoist the flag upside down, and wink at Alexsimevich as the outward and visible sign of the inward and spirituous distress. He takes the rest of the champagne in a last gulp, and with a series of thanks we gain the entrance to the shop, where two Mongols and a Buriat are waiting patiently, looking vacantly around at the crockery.

We are shown ceremoniously to the door, shake hands, remark about the weather, give our compliments to the wife, and depart. When at the corner, we glance back. Vassili Michaeloff is still standing on the threshold; his three customers too are looking out leisurely at the people passing.

“We have thrown his business out of gear,” we remark to Alexsimevich.

He seems surprised.

“There is plenty of time. Why should they mind waiting? Nietchevo.”

Another host is overjoyed to see us, for an engineering problem of great perplexity is, he tells us in due course, harassing his mind. No one in Urga can help him out, but perhaps we will.

“The Chinese governor, the Zinzin, wants to make an automobile line from Kalgan,” the host announces. “I saw an iron bridge once, so I agreed to build him one over the Lara River. Have you ever seen an iron bridge? How shall I do it?”

You allow that you have seen an iron bridge,—that you have even gone across one. You suggest that much depends on the river. “How wide is it, for instance?”

“I have not picked out the place for the bridge yet,” answers the host; “but the river is somewhere between sixty and three hundred feet wide. Have some vodka?”

“And how deep is the water?” you ask.

“Well,”—after much thought,—“it is deep in the middle and shallow at the edges. Have a cigarette! Have some tea! If we build this bridge, the Zinzin will give us a decoration. How much will the bridge cost?”

“That depends upon what sort of bridge you build, and how long it is, and how much material you use!”

Alexsimevich comes in.

“You see, the more iron you use, the more the bridge costs,” he observes.

“Navierno! navierno! you speak sagely, Alexsimevich. That is what I told the Zinzin.”

“It must have piers and abutments,” you venture.

“But the Zinzin does not like piers, because the water was not made to put such things into. Yet I said with you, one must always have piers. Here is brandy. Take a few sardines!”

The problem certainly needs something special for its elucidation. You ponder, and Alexsimevich and the host breathlessly watch the hatching of your official pronunciamento.

At last you deliver yourself.

“Find out how wide and deep the river is. Then write to a steel-manufacturing company, to quote prices. They will send a blue-print of an automobile bridge of the specified length, together with the weight of the steel. You can buy pieces to build it at so many kopecks a pound, just like butter.”

“Ah, my friend, you do not know how great a service you have rendered! What a providence is your coming! Pray, have some cognac! Will they send me a picture with piers,—a picture that I can show the Zinzin?”

“Yes,—yes, indeed.”

“I go to-morrow to tell him of this.”

We are once more in the street and the banded escort is turning into still another Russian’s house. Their idea of sightseeing is apparently to take tea with every Russian in the place. A mild desire is registered to come in contact with some of the other people. The idea strikes them in the light of a strange new doctrine.

“You wish to see Mongols?” one asks. Though surprised, they acquiesce amiably. “To-day they have holiday; you are favored. Go see the doings and make me visit later,” says the disappointed third host.

Then the wool-merchant speaks.

“Near by is the great temple of Urga, which few have seen, for it is one of the most holy places of the Lama faith. It is the temple of Maidari, the Future God. If the gaspadine wishes to see it, I, who have bought wool from the uncle of the keeper of the gate, can gain admittance.”

For this we start. The Russian section, made up of shops with posters and signs in Slavonic letters, and homes with centre chimneys and little square panes of glass, is left behind. Through a long dark lane we come out into the main thoroughfare of Mongol Urga. The town is in festival for the New Moon. The streets are ablaze with color. Red posters are on every door and wall. The brilliant picture is framed by the snowy girding hills and the green trees of the Holy Mountain to the south. The tomb-like altars on the plain are dazzlingly white against the gray-plastered fronts of the houses behind. The gilded gargoyles of the temples flash in the sun. Down the main street, a hundred feet broad, go bevies of girls, their hair bedecked with the gaudiest ornaments of silver and pearl, their silken robes striped and banded in green alternating with yellow and blue and gold. Lamas stride here and there dressed in bright orange robes and hats, their silver knives hanging at their sides. Great shaggy-haired dromedaries swing past. Horsemen, robed in vivid scarlet and blue and magenta, dash at full gallop across the wide open piazza in the centre of the town. A donkey-cart is driven slowly along, crowded with brightly-dressed girls. A squad of Chinese cavalry trot by in white jackets, red-lettered. Two of the Cossack garrison swagger past. A bearded Siberian trader strolls across, clothed in the dark Mongolian cloak which most have adopted, going toward the Russian quarter we have just left. A string of oxen plods by, drawing cartloads of wood.

Walking on, we come to a long line of kiosks which a continuous procession of pilgrims in holiday attire is entering. In each booth is a cask-shaped prayer-wheel, a magnified model of those which women carry, twirling them in their hands as they walk.

Along this main square of Urga, and girding her city stockade, are hundreds of these cylinders. All the day long, men and women are going in and out from one kiosk to another, turning. Some say that formerly one could enter a great Tibetan temple only after saying a prayer so long that even a Grand Lama’s memory could not carry it. So, for convenience, a cylinder with the written text was set up at the temple gate. By degrees it became the custom, without reading it, to rotate the petition for a blessing. Others say that the wheels are whirled in literal obedience to Buddha’s precept to “turn over and over his words.”

Alternating with the wheels are stone shrines graven with Tibetan characters, before which, on wooden couches, silken-dressed women are abasing themselves in abject worship. A long line of pilgrims is doing the circle of the city. They stand, then drop prostrate in the snow. Rising, they move conscientiously forward to where their heads touched, and again lie prone, making thus a penitential circuit of the stockade. Most are in deadly earnest. Some, hired for a proxy service, steal forward a few inches on each prostration.

Suddenly three distant guns boom out.

“Scurry, scurry toda!” says the wool-merchant. “Quick, this way. He is coming.”

You hurry forward to where a trail leads across the square. Afar off, in the direction of the Holy Mountain, is seen a band of galloping cavalry. The Mongols on horseback around you are drawing rein. The pilgrims are looking toward the approaching cavalcade. Brilliant red and yellow are the robes that flutter as the body-guard ride. Now a rumble of wheels is heard among the clattering hoofs. Preceded by twenty horsemen, followed by twenty more, rolls down a Russian droshky, with a yellow-robed lama driving. Propped among the multicolored cushions sits a clean-shaven, silk-robed man, with puffy cheeks and tired eyes. The European watch which he carries hangs in anomalous awkwardness at the breast of his robe; his leg is propped on the front seat, as if he were lame. Most turn their backs to him in Oriental honoring; many prostrate themselves in the snow; every horseman in the square has dismounted.

“He drives from his palace beside the Holy Mountain to the temple on the hill beyond the city,” says the wool-merchant.

“But who is it?” we ask, as the last galloper rides by.

The Russian looks at us as an old Roman might, if in the Forum we had not recognized Cæsar.

“That! That’s Gigin, the Living God! That’s Buddha come back to earth,—Gigin!”

You stand a moment to take it all in. Then, despite your purpose of respect, a smile works to the front.

At once the wool-merchant laughs gleefully. “Ask Varlakoff about the Buddha,” he chuckles. “Varlakoff sold him his ponies for ten thousand roubles. My friend showed him a picture of the ponies, little horses, you know, and Gigin told him to get them. They had to send to an island of Europe, Scotland. But Gigin was very pleased. He said Varlakoff was the only man who had never lied to him.”

The expression of the wool-merchant was that worn according to tradition by the Roman augurs.

“When there is not a holiday, the people have the market here in this square,” the merchant continues. “I was here in the bazaar with a friend last week, and we heard a commotion over by that prayer-wheel. We went up, to find that two of the Buddha’s lamas were borrowing a fine horse, worth three hundred roubles, which belonged to a Mongol woman. It was all she had, she told us, and it was being taken to the Living God’s stables. The woman was in great distress.

“‘It is mine. I will appeal to the Consul,’ said my friend.

“The Gigin’s men could not take a Russian’s horse, so they had to give it up. The Mongol woman came and wept on him, she was so glad. She brought a gift to my friend. Generally the Gigin returns such borrowed booty when he has used it a while, but often not. Anything that is new, the God will buy. These pilgrims, you see, bring him offerings. Kalmuks come all the way from the Volga, Manchus make pilgrimages, Buriats come down from north of Baikal, and tribesmen from Tibet. He has half a million roubles a year from his priests, and he does not care for anybody.”

Becoming more and more steeped in celestial gossip, we go past the gray-plastered compounds piled high with wood and timber, a main export of Urga. Tall masts with logs suspended from them are the signs. We reach at last a big stockaded courtyard, the beginning of the monastery quarters.

“Come, look in here!” says the guide.

You peer through the gateway at six of the biggest bronze burgoo-kettles that ever existed outside an ogre’s kitchen. Each kettle can hold a couple of cows.

“It is to feed the monks,” says your companion.

The Mongols are going up to the vessels, with buckets suspended to the end of a milkmaid’s yoke. They dip up a load. The soup looks like gray tapioca pudding. What it is made of remains one of the secrets of the monastery, whose chef is stirring the mixture with an oar.

A big stockade, enclosing tents and peaked soumé, from which the sound of chattering is heard, appears ahead. As we approach, a whole hive of boys swarm out and scatter in all directions. Some are in red, some in yellow, some wear ordinary Mongol caps, some wear high, yellow sugar-loaf fools’-caps, which fall over on one side. These are the novices in training for the lama hierarchy.

The first-born of each family must by immemorial custom become a lama. In babyhood and boyhood one of these dedicated children is clad in yellow robes and is especially tended. “Ubashi,” he is called. When about ten years old the boy goes to school, at Urga. He becomes a bandi, or student of the prayers and of the Tibetan language. He runs about as those we have just seen, and at about twenty he becomes a gitzul, or first-degree lama. Now he shaves head and beard, and wears a brilliant yellow and red robe. Next he takes the more advanced examination and catechism, and becomes a full priest, or gilun, forbidden to marry, to kill, or to work. He may continue his curriculum in one of the departments of the lamasery, studying divinity, medicine, or astrology.

In the divinity course a lama will memorize Tibetan prayers, and pore for years over the big holy books which lie within the chests of the lamasery chapels. He will repeat the creed over his beads, in rapt self-hypnotism, meditating in celestial holiness. He will pray down rain for the grass, and will exorcise glanders from the ponies.

A priest taking the medical course will gain a knowledge of the innumerable herbs that grow on the Tibetan mountains, many of which are of great value as drugs, and are known only to these monastic seekers. Massage, warm sulphur baths, and waters, are part of his pharmacopœia. Mixed with genuine instruction in anatomy and medicine, he will be taught the incantations that cast out tchutgours, or evil spirits, the words of power to be written on rice-paper and rolled into a pill for the patient to swallow. He will learn what devil is responsible for the disease which has brought low the lusty herdsman, and the right order of image to make for allaying the infernal anger. He will be taught when the fever crisis is at hand, so that the cymbal-clashers, the drum-beaters, and the prayer-wailers may assemble, and by these holy noises and a transcendental counter-excitement, lift the patient over the fever-point.

If he elects astrology, he will be instructed in casting horoscopes of unfailing value, in reading the stars, predicting their future stations and the coming of eclipses. He will be prepared to declare the reasons for visitations of murrain and to track the trail of straying camels.

Divers are the paths of knowledge, but all may lead to the honor of Grand Lama, head of a monastery, or member of the college of shabniars, who form the Council of the Living God. And when the great reaper has called the high priest from his earthly glory, a whitened tomb will be raised to his memory just outside some town along the camel-trail, while his ashes will be moulded into briquettes and godly images, to rest before the gods in the shrine of some soumé.

We have arrived at the gateway to the great temple. The wool-merchant disappears inside to work his pull. A young lama comes out to the door, smiles at the foreigner, and then goes in again, and you tremble lest your advent is being announced to some other than the one man who can supposedly be “fixed.” This is the most important temple of Urga, forbidden to foreigners, and seen through good fortune by a few only of the old residents. But every gate they bar to hate will open wide to love—and a ten-rouble note. The merchant comes back.

“We can go in while the lamas pray,” he whispers.

The uncle appears, with an expectant look on his face, and motions us in through the darkness to the anteroom of the temple sanctuary.

From the chamber curtained off at one side comes a low swelling chant.

“Service begins, you may see it from here,” the lama says, just above his breath.

Your station is in darkness, but just the other side of the curtain are the lamas, and their apartment is lighted by windows. Two rows of benches extend the length of their chamber, leaving an aisle between them, reaching from the door to the altar. A score of priests in yellow robes, with red sashes slung tartan-fashion over a shoulder, are sitting on these seats facing each other. They are ranged evidently in the order of their ages. Two old giluns, fluent in the Tibetan litany, sit next the altar. Then come younger lamas, the gitzul, not yet full priests. Finally next to the door are bandi, ten or twelve years old, intense in youthful delight that their part in the ceremony is to pound as lustily as they can the big prayer-drums. The service begins with the chanting of a ritual in form not unlike the Slavonic litanies of Siberia. At appointed times it is necessary to call the god’s attention to the fact that something is going on in his honor. At once a most deafening clamor begins. The small boy with a drum is drowned out by his big brother, further up the line, who officiates upon a huge wooden cornet, and by his uncle with the conch-shell or the cymbals. The droning of prayers is like the buzz of hiving bees. There seem to be no responses, but all of them read together. Presently comes a sudden clamor, almost like a fire-alarm; then the crash and the droning suddenly cease.

“It is over!” says the guide.

The lamas file out by a further door, and we tiptoe in to inspect the holy of holies at the heart of the great lama sanctuary. In the dimness one sees first before him the table for offerings, on which are the two main sacerdotal instruments,—a silver bell and a silver handle like a carving-knife-rest,—and row after row of targets made of dough-paste, of brass cups filled with oil to serve the tapers, of millet, rice, currants. Behind this altar, towering far up into the hollow of the dome, is the bronze colossus of the smiling Buddha, Maidari, the Future God.

Fifty feet in height, the figure is, cross-legged, with open, painted eyes. From Buddha’s hands hang long silken streamers. One of very fine quality is embroidered with the ten thousand gods.

“This,” the priest whispers, “is a present from the Dalai Lama.”

A great festival takes place in summer in honor of this god, who will rule a myriad years hence, when the race of giants descends to kill mankind and to people the earth with their own kindred. The Gigin’s elephant is brought out, and he himself takes the lesser dignity of a carriage in deference to Maidari. Even the gods of the present must honor the gods of the future.

The Gigin’s throne is to the left of the statue. It has triple silk cushions. Around are twelve colossi of Buddha, some ten feet in height, and entirely gilt save for the red lips and the eyes. The hands are held in differing positions, folded, outstretched, pointing. Here and there a silk scroll is hung.

The walls of the sanctuary are lined with shelves like a book-store, and these are loaded with statuettes of the ten thousand gods.

We tiptoe back the way we came, and are soon in the street of the monastery. The uncle has seen us safely away. We betake our route from the Mongol toward the Russian section.

“You saw the throne cushion of Dalai Lama?” the wool-merchant asks. “They have put it back now. Gigin kicked it out of the temple when Dalai Lama left. The Angleski drove Dalai Lama from Lhasa, and he came to Urga to visit Gigin, because here is the second great Buddhist holy place. Now Dalai Lama is very monkish, very austere, and always prays and fasts. But our Gigin”—here follows another expansive smile—“Gigin rode out with his Council, the shabniars, and took some of Pokrin’s best champagne in the cart, for they would not have it in Lhasa. Dalai Lama was very stiff. Gigin asked him, ‘Have a drink!’ Dalai did not understand, for drink is forbidden. Then he asked him again, and Dalai Lama refused rebukingly. They came to Gigin’s palace at the foot of the Holy Mountain, which is built like the Russian consulate. After the prostrations, Gigin said to Dalai that he had come far and few women were on the road and those mostly old and ugly. Dalai Lama refused that too. Cigarettes and snuff, and canned tomatoes he offered, but Dalai Lama refused them all. Then, in the Assembly of the Lamas, Dalai rebuked Gigin, and made him sit below his servants in penalty, for Dalai Lama is more of a god than Gigin. All the pilgrims came to offer gifts to Dalai Lama, and Gigin did not get his. For months Dalai Lama stayed here. Afterwards he went away to China. Gigin came to this temple then and kicked Dalai Lama’s throne, throwing it down. He celebrated in the summer palace when Dalai Lama left, for he was very happy.”

******

Mongol Urga is left behind, and we reënter the Russian town. A hail from one of the passers-by is not long delayed. “Will you have chai?” he questions. He is an alert-looking Russian, smartly clad in a shuba of green leather trimmed with sable.

“Must we eat any more dinners to-day?” we inquire.

“Only tea,” is the reply. It is not quite reassuring.

“That is Pokrin, the one that sells to the Gigin,” the wool-merchant whispers. “Go with him: he can tell you some tales.”

Obviously one must not miss the acquaintanceship of this modern Ganymede, cup-bearer of the many-bubbled French nectar and jugged ambrosia; so on we march to his compound.

Pokrin was on his way to a business appointment; but no rendezvous will interfere with prospective chai. He hangs his coat back on its peg, bids his wife start up the samovar, and produces the vodka-bottle. Yes, his family is very well, and he is very busy buying hides. We talk up and down and roundabout numberless themes, and at last venture: “The Gigin!”

“Ah, the Gigin was here to see me only a week ago.”

We bow our recognition of the host’s great importance, and he is started; soon he buckles down into the story.

“The Buddha came up in his carriage with his lamas riding beside him, and they tied their horses all around here in front. Then Gigin came in, walking softly because of his gout, and he said, ‘Let us drink together like friends, without quarreling.’

“I brought out the drinks, and we sat down,—Gigin and I with the lamas around us. Gigin likes best the strong drinks,—not vodka, but cognac and sweet champagne. Very many bottles we drank, Gigin and I. And at last I fell asleep. But Gigin drank still. Then he too fell asleep. In the morning the lamas carried him to his carriage, and back he drove to the palace, with the people lying down in the street as he passed. All the next day I had a very bad pain in my forehead, and it felt large.”

By non-Siberian standards Alexsimevich should be on the way to similar symptoms in the near future. For the purveyor to the Divinity has produced an assorted collection of his wares which are being sampled with due diligence. Cold meats and wheat-bread appear on the table with the samovar.

“We must eat, or he feels badly,” whispers Alexsimevich, as he makes a sandwich, an inch and a half through, which is about the depth of brandy in the Siberian highball.

Other neighbors drift in as the afternoon wears on. The talk turns to that greatest of local events, the Metropolitan Handicap of Mongolia, under the high patronage of the Living God. Things become decidedly stimulating, and the recitals lively. Everybody is living over the excitement, ejaculating and gesticulating. The child-quality in their minds keeps so vivid their impressions, that the scenes are projected almost as by a cinematograph.

From hundreds of miles around, the herdsmen have assembled. The plain before the city is a riot of color, as the horsemen ride here and there. In the centre of the field is the gay pavilion for the yellow-robed bishops and cardinals from distant lamaseries, guests of the great Gigin.

All through the morning, hundreds of riders and horses have been making for the starting-point, twenty li (about seven miles) distant. The jockeys are the smallest boys available: young red-cheeked lamas, perched bareback on the shaggy racing-ponies. The monks, who are stewards of the course, have with much shouting finally, at the hour, lined them up in a long row, facing Urga. One thousand ponies have been reported as entering. It is a regiment of boys. A signal starts the whole cavalcade together. The thousand small jockeys shout at once. A thousand whips come down on flanks. Two thousand heels dig into the ponies’ withers. Over the irregular plain tear the racers, dodging around gullies, stumbling in marmot-holes, galloping helter-skelter amid furious yells. At length they come within sight of Urga. Crowds, mounted, have gone out to follow them in. The shouts redouble, the people become frantic; the riders yell at one another, and the horses are as wild as their masters.

Shabniars and cardinals get to their feet as the cavalcade appears. The Living God’s heavy eyes brighten up with interest. His chief soul-mate waves a jewelled hand and chatters excitedly with a lama of the guard. The foremost rider is close at hand now, the jockey, wriggling like an eel and almost on the neck of his pony, yelling and slashing. The field thunders behind. The leader nears the pavilion, his pony is on the fierce final spurt,—a last cut of the whip, and in triumph, amid the deafening roar of the populace, the winner passes the line. Many other riders come in at his heels, but most straggle off to either side of the course when they see that the finish is lost. The victor is caught up by the priests and is brought before Gigin, where he lies on his stomach in adoration. He receives a gift, and is pensioned for life. The horse’s owner receives a good price for the animal, which is added to the Gigin’s stable. The mule-cart of the Buddha is then brought up and he is loaded in. The yellow bishops mount their steeds, and back to his palace goes the Living God. Thus ends the great Urga race.

There are other athletic tournaments during the season; most important of these is the championship wrestling-bout, which every year decides whether laymen or clergy are the better sportsmen. The Gigin’s pavilion fronts a ring, with dressing-tents on either side. From one emerges a layman. He advances by huge jumps and prostrates himself before the deity. Next, palms on the ground, like a great frog, he leaps into the ring. The chosen lama executes the same pass from the other side. They meet, jumping like game-cocks, with quick breaks. At length the clergyman gets a leg. In an instant he heaves up on it, and over goes the black man,—out! The whole assembled populace raises a stupendous howl. Bout succeeds bout, with differing champions and varying issues. Partisanship is intense. The clergy usually win in these matches, and have long held the championship.

One guest tells to-night of the photographer who bribed a lama, and got the first photograph of Gigin. The tale runs that this man, a Russian, secured admission among a crowd of pilgrims, and snapped the god, unawares, among his entourage of priests. This photograph, enlarged and colored, is the one now hawked to the Mongols, and which they set up for worship among their other gods. The lama was beheaded, they say. That was several years ago, however: since then Gigin has been photographed at the races and elsewhere.

At last we break away from the group and return to our lodgings at Varlakoff’s.

We are informed next day that among the invitations so lightly and uncomprehendingly accepted was one to take dinner with the mayor of the Russian settlement. We are expected therefore toward evening. So, late in the day, we gird on our greatcoat and move out heavily. Down the street we fare forth to the house of the host. A fine well-fed man is this mayor, with the cordial grip and the slow smile of good-fellowship. He wears a very long beard. He has taken a fancy to the embroidered green and pink Chinese ear-tabs as a substitute for the big fur cap of his own people. The ear-tabs are about as appropriate to his burgomaster build as baby-blue ribbon on the tail of a fighting bull-pup. Otherwise, deerskin boots and hunting-coat, he is the real Siberian. In the mayor’s large sitting-room, along the wall against which the table stands, is a rank of bottles of divers heights and fatness, like recruits out for their drill. The samovar of shining brass leads the array. Four different-sized glasses stand at each plate, and the intervening area is covered with platters of sausages, cheese, bread, sprats of every conceivable variety, and a medley of cold zakuska dishes.

The mayor reaches for the vodka.

“Please, none!” we blurt out.

The mayor looks hurt. Then an idea takes form in his head, and he shouts something to his Chinese boy, who promptly shuffles through the door into the street.

Out of the window we catch a glimpse of him turning into the establishment across the way, where Pokrin’s clerk sells the wherewithal to make a Russian holiday. The Chinese boy emerges with a bottle, and trots back across the street with the curious gait made requisite by the unattached thick-soled slippers. He shuffles into the dining-room and makes space for one more bottle. Whiskey! The mayor has bethought himself of the English label, and has sent for it, on the theory that not to drink, like not to sleep, is unbelievable.

Evidently one must again sidestep, so chai is besought and got down. Our virtue is rewarded, for the host smiles and is content.

“Poor Pokrin!” he says presently, reminded of the man by the beverage. “He made over a hundred thousand roubles from selling things to the Gigin. But now he can’t think of any more things to sell. You saw the Gigin’s new droshky? But that isn’t like selling an elephant or an electric-light plant. Pokrin is down to pelicans and fountain-pens.”

He shakes his head sympathetically, and reaches anew for the vodka-bottle. He goes on reminiscing, half-cynically, half-regretfully, of the past, while dinner to serve the appetite of a Cyclops keeps coming on.

In the midst of the repast cries arise outside. A Mongol with a flow of language is heard calling aloud for “Bulun Darga!” (fat policeman.)

“They are after me,” says the mayor resignedly.

The Mongol comes hurtling in, pushing past the Chinese boy.

“Fat policeman,” he cries; “Red Mustache and Long Nose and Blue Coat are drunk, and are disturbing my gir. Come quickly, O Lord, fat policeman.”

The mayor sighs. “I go”; then he turns to us. “Will you accompany me?”

“Gladly, if we don’t have to eat any more.”

The mayor considers this a back-handed compliment to the amplitude of his hospitality and smiles.

“V period, it is not far.”

He puts on his huge greatcoat, draws on his ponderous boots, takes a heavy stick, and in vividly embroidered Chinese ear-tabs stands ready to follow the Mongol. We shoulder open the felted door. From the low-ceilinged recess between this and the outer door he produces two other big sticks, like pilgrim’s staves. These he hands to his visitors.

“For the dogs!” he explains.

The Mongol’s hut is soon reached. It is in frightful disorder, and vodka-bottles are strewn around. The mayor looks up in a little book to see if Krasni, young Agueff, and Pugachev are not, as he suspects, the men who in native nomenclature are called Red Mustache, Blue Coat, and Long Nose. He finds that he has rightly surmised.

“I know them,” says the mayor. “They will come around to me in the morning. I will tell them to make the Mongol satisfaction. When they come back and say he is satisfied, I tell them to be good and to do this no more. Nietchevo!”

The irate man is jollied along, and is told that it will be fixed up soon. Consoled and soothed by the protection of authority, he admits it was not so bad after all, and he bids us, as we leave, a grinning “Sein oh!”

“Now,” says the mayor, “will you not come and see Urga at night?”

He leads along an icy back street, black as a canyon, with the bulging mud-plastered walls, twenty feet in height, so close that a cart can barely pass between them. Not a light is seen save as a ray pierces the shuttered planking of some compound door. Distant clanging of cymbals and far-off echoes alone break the stillness. Out from the gloom of the street we come into the open piazza, half a verst wide. It is unshadowed, and less dark. Threading the heaped-up refuse we stumble on. The black crows, with lancet-like blood-red beaks, which search the heaps by day, are gone. The black cannibal dogs wake and growl as we approach.

“They are afraid of a stick and don’t generally attack people. But, if several do come at you, crouch down and stay perfectly quiet,” the mayor counsels.

He then tells of the Cossack who last year, passing by a dog that did not move aside, drew his sabre and struck the beast. As soon as the other dogs smelled the fresh blood, they became mad, and half a dozen came at him. He put his back against the wall and slashed among them. Many he cut and wounded, but more came and more, in an instant. Soon he was pulled down, for hundreds were upon him.

A big black-furred brute looks insolently at us as we pass.

“They do not bury the dead here, you know,” the mayor says. “The corpses are taken to the mountain northward outside the town, and are left. It is cold to-night. There will be death in the market-place where the poor lie shelterless. And the dogs wait beside them.”

A little way off, where the prayer-wheel stands, is the twinkling light of a shrine. The new moon and the few brilliant stars are frigidly distant. They cast a pale white glow now on the dimly outlined walls and huts. A beggar, lying unseen, calls suddenly as we pass his heap of sodden hides. The six-foot Siberian hunter by our side cries out as he stumbles over and beholds a something, partly eaten, guarded by a great cannibal dog.

If the thought of the rights of man has drowned sympathy with all that concerns the government of Russia, visit Urga at night, and the Cossack of the Russian Guard, swaggering along among the Chinamen,—this Cossack whom you have heard execrated as the “knout of the Czar,”—will look to you like a Highlander at Lucknow. The chance to absorb an unwholesome amount of tannin by way of a samovar, and to sleep on the floor beside the oven in the whitewashed house of Michael Varlakoff, will become a privilege more prized than any possessed by His Holiness, the Living God.

The section of the Russian colony in which we have been lodging consists of five hundred-odd traders. They have drifted down from Siberia, and on the free ground of taxless Urga have established their shops of gaudy European cloths, enameled cooking-utensils, candles, and cutlery. These Russians, whose whitewashed many-paned houses fill a quarter of the town, have not the large interests watched by the English merchants, who dot the globe with their agencies. They are small Trans-Baikal shopkeepers, transplanted bodily. They build their houses in the Siberian way, and their wives toil personally at the oven. They wear blouses and felt boots as the house-dress, and keep the ikons in the corner. Prosperity is evidenced in the striking-clocks, the lamps, nickeled samovars, and curtained double windows. But they are still not many removes from the peasant.

There is, however, another section of Urga’s Russian colony, grouped around the consulate, a large compound situated a verst east of the Mongol town, which was built in 1863, and was fortified in 1900, against the Boxers. Within this compound are the Orthodox Church, the Russian doctor, the rooms of the twenty Cossacks of the Guard, and the great empty barracks of the two sotnias that were sent here in Boxer times, and were, to the regret of their compatriots, later removed. The barracks are still ready for any future visits, and the breastwork, with its stake and fosse lined with barbed-wire, is equal to any force which from a five-hundred-verst radius can assemble against it.

In this quarter, the Russian consul is autocrat. He is the official notary, without whose stamp no contract is legal, the chief of police, the guardian of orphans. Around him revolves the society of the few dozen mondaines of Urga, whose personnel consists of the officials, the garrison officers, and some half-dozen commercial agents, single generally, or with distant families. They conduct their bachelor quarters through Chinese servants, and their cuisines are helped out by all the canned and bottled delicacies that can be ordered from the frontier. The gold-mines, and the extensive wool-trade which produces a commerce of twenty to thirty millions, demand that first-grade men watch the interests of the great companies which handle the business. So men of the best cosmopolitan Russian type come, at salaries proportioned to their sacrifice. They gather in the consulate evenings, or sit in the fenced-off boxes at the theatrical performances, which periodically come down from Kiahta.

A few families who have made their sixteen-day camel-trip from Kalgan and Peking have foregathered here with their household goods and gods.

Buttressed by the companionship of books, this other class lives in splendidly-furnished rooms, with pictures purchased in Paris, statuettes from Rome, and grand pianos drawn for days over the passes by laboring oxen. One converses at the consulate in French, the mother tongue of none, but the common tongue of all. The few favored guests, who are invited of necessity over and over, play chess endlessly in the evenings. The ladies read the latest French novels, or sing the songs that distant friends have sent from the Riviera or St. Petersburg.

They drive in imported carriages and sleighs for the afternoon airing, and bemoan Nice and Monte Carlo in winter over the pages of Zola’s “Rome.” The men subscribe extensively to English, French, German, and Russian periodicals. They invite such relatives as can be persuaded for lengthy stays, and shower a guest with the hospitality of old claret, caviar, and the varied courtesies which the rarity of visitors from the world inspires. They take long adventurous horseback trips in the dull season,—explore forgotten monasteries, study the Tibetan inscriptions, print monographs on the folk-tales, and dream of promotion and Petersburg.

The consulate has one uniquely circumstanced personality, whose career is a romance of Eastern adventure. Born in the Baltic provinces, he studied in the Oriental training-schools, and entered the Russian diplomatic service at Peking. Here he applied himself indefatigably, until he knew the Chinese language as did hardly another European. He could write the ten thousand ideographs, and could speak flawlessly the Mandarin and the popular dialects. He went to Mongolia and mastered its languages also,—its spoken idioms and its written grapevine letters. Then, with his diplomatic entrée, his knowledge of men and tongues, and the initiative of an adventurer, he launched his grand coup in the palace of Peking.

He carried away the sole right to the gold of two eimucks, a territory as large as France. Not a Chinaman may pan the metal, not a Slav may open a mine, save through this concessionnaire. A third of all gold washed,—these are his terms to those who would lease from him; just double what he pays the Peking Yamen for his privilege. Fortune upon fortune he is reported to have made, and the Chinese gold-washers and the Russian miners who lease from him have gathered their own stakes, too, despite the Cæsar’s tribute which he exacpts of all that they produce.

He has spent large sums in bringing down machinery, to do on a great scale what the shallow veins of ore demanded should be done on a limited scale. An abandoned gold-dredge lies far up the Iro River, transported piecemeal at exorbitant expense over the hills. Traction-engines are here, which could not cope with the Mongol roads. They consumed forty days going one hundred and twenty miles to the largest mine. Now they lie rusting in their sheds. Thousands of ox-carts were engaged for hauling in the various purchases. River steamers and great oil-drills scattered over northern Mongolia are relics of his ambition.

His brick house, finely furnished, and his brick smelter stand hard-by the consulate. The Russians tell of masons imported from Sweden to build them. The life-history is a bizarre record of great things attempted by a man whose overleaping ambition stopped nowhere, and whose expenditures more than once brought him down. But his interesting meteoric career continues, and twenty pud of gold are said still to come down yearly from the mines to the most picturesque character in Russian Urga.

We drive down with one of the officials, to be present at another of the events in Urga’s meagre happenings—the arrival of the mail.

The Russian post, one delivery a week, crosses Mongolia. The horses bring in three mails from the Russian frontier. From Urga to Kalgan, the camel-post guarded by Cossacks, traverses the great desert of Gobi. Save the Imperial Chinese telegraph, it is the only regular method of intercourse with the outside world. The two thousand-odd roubles a year paid by Russia as a subsidy are a small expenditure for the opportunity of accustoming the people to her service, and for controlling the avenues of news and communication.

The post-office is at the consulate, and a new postmaster has just been installed. Thereby hangs a tale which is poured into your ear before your stay in Urga has been much protracted.

A telegram came from Irkutsk to seize and bring to Verhneudinsk as propagandists the postmaster’s son and daughter—twenty-one and eighteen. Twenty Cossacks surrounded the house at three in the morning. The two were arrested, taken to the mayor’s house, and lodged there. The next day they were started on the trail to Kiahta. Once over the border, there would be no more hope. Quickly the leading men of the colony assembled and telegraphed the Russian ambassador at Peking, knowing that if the ambassador had official cognizance, he could not safely authorize an arrest on Chinese soil by the Cossacks of the Guard. The response was delayed, but there was pressure enough upon the consul to get the prisoners held at the mining-camp beyond Iro until the answer was received. At length the ambassador replied that Chinese suzerainty must be respected. The two were free. But the father had been advised to resign his post and accept a station which was offered him at Kalgan, where there were only three Russians, all warranted proof against propaganda.

Beyond the Russian consulate, six versts, is the Chinese town called, as are many of these trading-posts, Maimachen, or place of trade. One can get there by the solitary Cossack-driven droshky that the Russian colony supports. But more appropriately we go on pony-back, borrowing an army-saddle and a purple fleece-lined shuba, whose skirts reach around the knees, and whose long sleeves fold over the hands, keeping a rider reasonably warm in cold weather.

The houses of Mongol Urga are soon left behind, the stockaded lamasery is passed on the left, and we are on a big open plain. A few minutes’ gallop takes us past the consulate. Beyond it stands a compound girded by a stockade of saplings, within which are the low mud walls of straggling houses, amid which the gilded eaves of a more pretentious residence lift themselves above the rest.

A troop of pig-tailed horsemen trots past: the white tunics of the riders are covered, back and breast, with red ideograph letters, which stigmatize the bearers as of the lowest caste—soldiers of the Celestial service. The man in front holds aloft a gilded pear-shaped standard, and between the ranks lumbers a covered cart with closed shutters. The cavalcade wheels to the right and turns in, dipping the standard as they pass under the gargoyle-tipped beams of the gateway. Servants come running out of the great house. From the cart is helped down a Manchu of pallid face and short gray mustache. That wooden house, girded by mud huts, is the seat of government for this greatest eimuck in Mongolia. The figure robed in cheap blue cotton is lord of life and death, the Zinzin, Viceroy for the Emperor of China.

This Manchu Viceroy, and his Tu-T’ung, or lieutenant-governor, who represents Chinese authority in the city of Kalgan, are responsible for the collection of tribute, the administration of justice in the cities, and the maintenance of order. Over the Chinese inhabitants in the Maimachen the rule through the agency of the prefect of police appointed by the Viceroy is direct and absolute.

Over the Mongols, Chinese rule is exercised in an irregular nebulous fashion, with some force in the centres and almost none in the outlying districts, where the old nomad organization of society, with princes, barons, or tai-tsi, clergy, and ordinary black men, still persists. A code of Chinese laws exists, but in general justice is dealt out by the local princes, or guns, who receive also the cattle-tax in some districts, and who go by turns for a year to Peking in symbol of homage.