told; and as you look, off comes the red sash and yellow robe. The
young priest stands up in his vivid blue jacket and walks to the
entrance of the _gir_. From a cupboard he takes a towel, and from the
fireplace, ashes. Pouring warm tea into a wooden bowl, he scrubs hands
and face with the vigor of an athlete after a run. Then back to the
cupboard he goes, and off comes the blue jacket for a clean new silken
one. A rich yellow robe is donned. A bright silver knife is slung upon
a new red sash which girdles his waist; and smart and erect as an
officer of the Guards, the lama steps over, prostrates himself before
his deities, then goes out into the night to his temple service.
“Creeds are many, but God is one,” murmurs Alexsimevich.
It is regrettable that the rule of lama celibacy prevents the
arrangement of the usual kidnapping marriage-ceremony between this
young priest of Zoulzacha, and Amagallan (blissfulness), the belle of
the Odjick encampment. It is early in the first moon, Sara, of the year
of the Ram, and holiday still reigns in Mongolia. Doubtless she, too,
is a sooty Cinderella at other times; but to-day she is a reigning
princess, dressed in the best that a father, owner of a hundred sheep,
can furnish. A bright new blue coat, lined with fine white lamb’s-wool,
is belted around her rather ample waist with a red sash. Her boots are
of evident newness. But the triumph, the chef d’œuvre, is her pointed
red hat made of the brightest Chinese silk. It is topped with a gold
and black knot and is garnished with gold braid. The flaps, turned
up at the sides and the back, are of a long silky dark-gray fur. A
broad red ribbon fastened behind is brought forward and rests on her
breast. She has a feminine eye to its brilliant contrast against the
blue dress. Two long tassels of pearls, set in coral-studded silver
earrings, frame a rosy, laughing face; for Amagallan is exhilarated
with the consciousness of being very well-dressed.
The presence of two young herdsmen in dark red and blue, and one lama
of the first degree,--and consequently not estopped from the race,
like a full-fledged priest,--bears testimony to the effectiveness of
the costume and the girl. The wiles with which she distributes a smile
to one, a dried Chinese plum to another, and a mild frown to a third,
reveal even more the universal woman. Amagallan is not at all averse
to adding to her string three masculine Russians. There are only two
foreign nations in Mongolia, Chinese and Russians. Into the latter
class come all stray visitants--Americans, Buriats, and Troitzkosavsk
teamsters. The girl stands up now and greets this American with a frank
hand-shake. She invites him to sit down with the rest. Since there is
scriptural permission to eat meat offered to idols, the fact that the
evening’s feast has stood at the feet of Buddha need not deter one from
partaking of the little dumplings, gray cheese, and dried fruits.
Amagallan hands them out on one of those sole-shaped biscuits, which
serve as plates until one has eaten what is on them, after which they
go down themselves. A fat sheep’s-tail is sliced for your benefit,
while a coarse lump of dusky-looking sugar is an ultimate delicacy,
eaten as candy. Muddy brick tea follows, of course. The Mongol bread is
good, but it takes resolution to do one’s duty by the gray cheese, the
resin-like desiccated milk, and the sheep-fat just seethed.
A chatter of conversation goes on, the neighbors drift in and out,
and those of our _gir_, as the evening wears on, make excursions to
the other huts and exhibit and drink more muddy tea for politeness’
sake. The hostess in each tent shakes your hand before feeding you.
The formality makes you temporarily one of the tribe and family, to
be treated with courtesy and hospitality. Thus you are taken into the
social life of a simple affectionate people.
We meet in one hut a traveling friar who has tramped sturdily from
Tibet, pack on back and prayer-beads on arm, begging, praying, selling
relics claiming to cure rheumatism, and the eye-diseases which the
smoky huts induce. He carries on a pole an image of Gumbo and others
of the _dokchits_, together with a hodge-podge collection of rosaries,
strips of silk, bells, beads, pipe-picks, etc. These are jingled during
parts of his prayer, where it is necessary to keep the god attentive.
[Illustration: A MONGOL “BLACK MAN”]
In one hut they are playing the age-old game of _tawarya_. A bag
is produced containing hundreds of sheep’s-knuckles, colored blue.
Everybody gets a handful. Then a girl holds out her fistful of them,
and each man guesses the number. There is a rapid fire of shouted
numerals,--“_niger, hayur, urbu, durbu!_” The one who guesses correctly
gets the handful of knuckles. This person next holds out his fistful,
and so it goes. It is an uproarious sport, interspersed with quite
unnecessary grabbings of disputed handfuls,--part of the game that
Amagallan is playing, even if not germane to _tawarya_.
Finally through the darkness you make your way back to the _gir_
in which you are billeted. The wreathing smoke from its dome is
illuminated to-night by the beams from the fire below. It rises in
dimly bright convolutions, beautiful in its small way as the great
Northern Lights. You spread your felt on the floor of the tent and roll
up in your rugs. The teamster needs a timepiece to regulate his hour of
harnessing, for you must start at daybreak. Leave your watch for him on
the altar of the _dokchits_. It will be safe in this hut by the desert
of Gobi, among the remnant of the Golden Horde.
* * * * *
The days’ marches have taken us well up among the ridges of the Kentei
Mountains. To the eastward is the peak which, despite the claims of
Urga’s Holy Mountain and of a site near Tibet, has the best authority
for being the burying-place of Genghis Khan.
In 1227 the great conqueror died. The confused records tell of his
body’s being taken northward to a mountain which was the heart of his
empire, from whose slopes sprang the sources of the three great Mongol
rivers,--the Tola, the Onon, and the Kerulon. Beside its sacred lake
the Manchu Amban of Urga sacrifices annually to the Nature-spirits.
It is both a survival and a memorial to the bloody sacrifice of every
living being on the road to the grave,--a tribute which tradition says
the guards of Genghis Khan’s funeral cortège offered to their departed
chief.
Huts are far apart in these highlands now, and the whistling winds
pierce the very marrow. The tired horses can hardly crawl forward on
the doubtful trail. Far up in the heights, beside an old caravan-route,
superseded by a newly-cut artery of travel, we come very late upon an
ancient wooden shrine.
The worshipers have gone. They lived their time in a village near
by, but with the exhaustion of pasturage for the flocks, under nomad
necessity they moved. A new camel-road was tramped out by drivers, who
must find shelter amid habitations. So in the shrine, long unpainted,
the smiling Buddha presides now over his famished altar.
Very, very old, very, very poor, is Archir the warden, who
welcomes you. For forty years he has watched in his _gir_ by the
dragon-gargoyled gate. The spear with which he stood to his post
of old is blackened, and its red tassel is dulled and faded. A
tattered fringe is along the edge of the felt door to his _yurta_, and
holes are under its walls close to the ground. His pile of wood is
pitifully small, and few are his sandal-sole biscuits. His _shuba_,
sheepskin-lined, is blackened with the soot of years.
Archir refuses courteously what he knows is a rare foreign delicacy,
a Russian cigarette. “A lama,” he says, “may not smoke.” But his own
hospitality is of the thoughtful kind which comes from the heart. He
hands you a sheepskin softened by long massaging between his trembling
old hands, that his own covering, not your coat, be burned by the
sparks from the brazier. He notices that your tea-bowl is awkwardly
held, and he brings a little table to put before you. He sees your
driver fumbling for a match to light his pipe, and reaches him a coal
with the fire-tongs. He clears his couch that you may sit in comfort.
He offers you the first use of his fire for cooking.
In the old days many came to pray to the smiling Buddha. The drivers
of the tea-caravans from far-off China left their offerings of fruit
and silk scarves. The herdsmen whose lambs had lived well through a
bitter winter gave sheep fat of tail to the two yellow-robed priests
who chanted and clashed the cymbals through the long days and into
the nights. The little boys dedicated to the gods, shaven-headed,
rosy-faced, crooned their lessons in the Tibetan tongue, sitting on the
floor of the big blue school-gir beside the shrine. Every day pilgrims
on their way to Urga stopped to pray in the _soumé_, and filled the
tent of the young guardian with eatings of noodle-soup and drinkings of
tea, with gossip and with song.
But all is changed now in his little hut. The rule of non-marriage
he keeps in the spirit, where so many lamas observe it only in the
morganatic letter. This has left him alone in his old age, and
pitifully solitary now that even the dwindling camel-trains, of whose
tea-traffic the Manchurian Railway has robbed them, pass by no more.
The priest is unfed even by pilgrims. These have gone with the rest to
the routes of a better prosperity.
Archir has seethed his evening meal of sheep-meat and flat pieces of
dough. He has let the fire die down to embers, and has pulled the
covering over the round hole. The freezing winds very soon make his
hut so cold that one feels like a thin shaking uncovered creature even
beneath the heaped furs. One’s ungloved hands grow numb as he lies by
the brazier.
In the morning we too depart, and like the Roman legionary beside the
Vesuvian gate of Pompeii, the old priest waits, alone, unquestioning,
uncomplaining, till a greater God than he of the _soumé_ shall send the
summons of relief.
* * * * *
The mountain-ranges, one after another, stretch their towering barriers
across the path. They trend northeast and southwest, as in Siberia.
First comes the Sharan Daba, the white range, whose pass leads down to
the Iro River, rich in alluvial gold. The streams flow westward into
the Cellinga, whose waters empty into Lake Baikal, and thence by the
Angara River, into the far-off Arctic Ocean.
Ridge follows ridge now, and valley follows valley,--narrow cuts, with
shallow streams, and huts clustered upon their sides. Out from the
almost deserted borderland, the Mongol encampments are not unfrequently
pitched where there is water for the flocks. If any wood be near by, it
is well, since then the dried dung can be reserved for the smokeless
evening fire when the top hole is closed.
When the steep mountain climb has been passed, it is as if a gateway
had been opened through the constricting ridges. The broad valley of
the Haragol stretches out. Down, down, we go, onto a plain, in the
centre of which we come to an enclosure with a high mud wall and a
peaked gateway, gaudily decked with red banners and vivid placards.
Outside the mud walls of the compound, far and wide, are checker-board
squares with irrigation ditches between. Huge stacks of hay and straw
are piled up near the gate, the wonder and envy of the nomads, who
never have more than the scantiest store. Within are booths facing the
courtyard. A little temple occupies one corner. Two-wheeled carts are
drawn up along the wall. Troughs and picket-poles are ranged in line,
ready for the caravans.
Now, around the tarantass, there gather from their threshing the
dwellers of the compound,--coolies from the far-off Pink Kingdom, with
puffy blue trousers and tight-buttoned jackets, flail in hand and metal
pipe in mouth. They stare stolidly without comment at the frost-covered
horses, the robes, and the bearded strangers. Expressionless they stand
watching every movement. Alexsimevich asks a question; no one answers.
We sit for a moment mutually expectant. Not one of the Chinese stirs or
speaks.
Then André swings down and leads the team through the gateway into
the compound. Alexsimevich leads the search for shelter. We cross the
courtyard to the building which serves for the lodging of travelers.
Its walls are of mud, and a big adobe chimney projects up one side.
Beneath low eaves a small window with white paper panes blinks like
the sightless eyes of a blind man. We stoop, pushing open the crudely
pivoted door, enter the smoky chamber, and the door swings back behind.
We are standing in what seems an unreal world--a stage-scene or a
cavern from the Arabian Nights. In front and on each side close in
dark windowless walls. Behind comes a feeble light from the little
paper-paned window. In the dimness, a flickering fire throws fitful
gleams on dusky figures, idols, and wearing-gear hung on pegs driven
into the wall.
As your eyes become accustomed to the gloom, the details take shape. A
clay stove is to the left. Fagots are heaped beside it, copper kettles
rest upon its top, pigtailed figures are crouching around. In front,
a platform, raised four feet above the clay floor, occupies the whole
width of the room and extends back into the darkness. A group of men
are seated, cross-legged, around a little brazier, smoking. Others are
lying rolled in blankets.
With our luggage André staggers in. No one stirs. Some of the group
around the stove turn their heads to look, but that is all. André
heaps the food-bag and blankets in a vacant spot on the _kang_. We
make room on the stove for our pots to boil the water for tea. On this
self-elbowed place amid the rest we sit cross-legged, propped against
the clay wall. The smoke from the oven, led under the _kang_, warms it
so that the outer coat can come off. A little tabouret some six inches
high stands in a corner, and serves as a table for the repast.
The shelter is far better, as comforts go, than any of the Mongol
tents. The icy wind that sweeps the latter is barred off. There
is a stove to replace the nomad’s brazier; a warm _kang_ instead
of the floor to rest upon. But how different is the spirit of the
hosts! There are no frank hand-clasps here, no interested gossip and
inquiries of the adventures by the way. No generous bringing out of fat
sheep’s-tails and snuff-bottles for the guests’ delectation. You cannot
but have the feeling that these people are as indifferent to your
existence as they are to the pariah dog that howls outside the walls.
They are exclusive, non-welcoming,--these Chinese. They are strangers
to the land, self-sufficing in their toilsomely cultivated rye- and
wheat-fields, an isolated, womanless, working settlement.
Despite the better quarters and comfort which these inns afford, one
prefers to go to a Mongol tent and be among men more human, if less
civilized. When the bread is thawed and the tea is boiled, we eat, pay
the Chinaman who gave the wood, and with a sense of relief go out again
to the tarantass and the road.
For versts now the way is along the alluvial plain, seamed with
irrigation-ditches and dominated by several of these walled Chinese
factories. As the sun goes down, however, there appears a solitary
building, and André gives a glad shout, seeing that it is built of wood
and has windows and big centre chimney. “_Russky dom!_” he cries.
A low mud wall surrounds the enclosure. Inside some quilts are hung in
the air, that the cold may kill the vermin. A big black dog comes up,
but unlike the scavenger beasts of the Mongol encampments, it signals
welcome with friendly tail-waggings and good-natured barks, approaching
at once as if accustomed to kindly treatment.
The quilted door of the house opens. A booted figure appears with
the familiar red blouse, and the Russian greeting hails you,
“_Zdravstvouitie!_”
“An Orthodox Buriat,” says Alexsimevich.
We mount his wooden steps, shake his hand, and enter the big warm room.
It is as if one were back in Siberia. The Buriat’s Siberian
wife, in shawl and kerchief, is busy at the whitewashed oven.
Brilliantly-colored comic prints detail the misadventures of the young
recruit, with doggerel ballad rhymes beneath. Chickens peck beneath
the stove, the samovar hums on the table, and figures sipping tea are
grouped around it on the benches, or are lying on the floor enjoying
the genial warmth.
“Hail, Alexsimevich!” comes a voice; and a tall bearded Siberian,
dressed in a Mongol robe, rises.
“Aha, Vladimir Vassilivich!” answers our interpreter. “Good-day!”
A volley of questions at once overwhelms him. The party has been long
away from Kiahta, and we have the latest news.
“A Kiahta merchant, my friend, and his son,” Alexsimevich explains.
Overcoats are being doffed, mufflers unwound, and boots kicked off.
The babble of talk continues. A place is made for us at the table,
and glasses of tea, with immense slices of cheese and ham, are placed
before us. When more tea and cigarettes have completed the repast,
Alexsimevich paces up and down, relating with dramatic gestures the
latest gossip from Troitzkosavsk.
In the midst of his narrative, which all are following with great
interest, there comes an incident of heightened vividness.
“Sh--sh!” a warning signal sounds. One of the auditors points to a
shape rolled in blankets, and lying on the bench.
“_Gaspaja_” (a lady), they say.
Alexsimevich completes his tale in a lower tone and with more artistic
circumlocution.
But it is the other side’s turn to tell a tale, for why, in the
ferocious cold of midwinter, with--save for this one Buriat’s
house--the Mongol huts only for nightly shelter, why does a lady come
down here?
The merchant explains: “She has twisted her knee-joint, and in Irkutsk,
in Tomsk even, the Christian doctors cannot heal her. A lama tells us
that warm sulphur-water will soften the sinews, and the bone can be
brought back into place. We go to the warm springs of the Holy River. I
have been there in old times, and I know the way.”
With pathetic eagerness the party has gone to do the lama’s bidding,
and bathe in the Mongol Jordan. Evening comes. The lady’s bench is
pulled over close to the oven. The merchant and his son lie down beside
it on the floor. Servants and drivers roll up at their feet, and all
sleep, in amity.
It takes resolution to awake at daybreak and leave the luxury of this
shelter. But when horses are harnessed, riders must ride. The rising
sun comes up over the white plain. The Buriat waves “good-bye” from
his doorstep; the dog barks in farewell, and we lumber on southward.
A sugar-loaf hill marks the end of the valley. We turn up now into the
mountains, the driver somewhat in doubt as to the way. A boy of about
fifteen years, a yellow-robed lama novice, rides by. Alexsimevich hails
him to ask the road to Urga. A complicated explanation follows, hardly
understood.
“I show you,” says the boy.
For a dozen versts he rides along on his pony beside us, chattering and
laughing. When, after a devious trail, the pass is in sight, he starts
off, and will not, at first, accept any present for his trouble.
Valley follows valley now, the trail fairly well defined. Mongol huts
give a chance for rest and for cooking. A welcome is bidden us in each,
the nearest water is shown, and invitations to come back are freely
extended.
There is now one last range to cross, the Tologoytou, highest and
steepest of all. Even the mounted Mongols, who have caught up with
our toiling tarantass, swing off and climb afoot. Trees are on either
hand, and the white wall-like face of the barrier passed in the morning
seems a bare verst away. There comes a whole slope of boulders and
rocks, jagged and broken, like the moraine of a glacier. And then, at
long last, we reach the high-heaped Borisan at the summit, with its
fluttering prayer-flags. The foremost Mongol throws on a rock, leaps
upon his pony, and rides twice around the mound.
“_Argila! argila!_” (bridles free! bridles free!) he cries, and trots
down behind the crest.
We, too, throw on a stone, and take the steep descent.
Beyond the low rolling ridges below is the white of the Holy Mountain,
topped with green foliage. Here one may not kill the thronging hare and
deer and pheasants. As we gallop down, the _obos_, the white memorial
monuments, take shape from the snow. In the dark-gray dimness of the
city beyond, green and gold roofs become distinct, lighted by the last
glow of the sinking sun. Huts cluster close now along the road, and the
shadows of innumerable dogs pass and mingle and pass again, where the
gray mud walls and houses begin to be continuous. In the dim twilight
the tarantass thunders into the great wide way which ends in the main
street of Urga.
Two hundred feet broad is this street. Mud walls twenty feet high flank
it. The gates to the enclosures are closed. The fast-fading light
discloses hardly any passers-by. Save for a distant tom-tom there is
deep silence brooding over the city. A great empty square is entered,
where a few figures are passing in the distance. We approach one of
these, who upon our question lurches up to the tarantass. He is a
Russian clad in Mongol _shuba_, rather the worse for liquor.
“I will show you,” he says amiably.
Affectionately leading the horses, he reels down one dark alley,
then down the next, until we come to a second broad street and to an
enclosure with a lantern-lighted gate. A cry brings at length a stir
within. The gate swings open.
“The _Varlakoff_ house!” says the guide thickly.
The tarantass is led in, and we stumble through the darkness into a
Russian home of some pretensions. In the main room is a lamp and a
table covered with a red cloth. A glass of tea is available and is
quickly swallowed. Then, tired out, we roll up in our blankets, on the
floor, and drop off to our first night’s sleep in Urga, the Holy City
of Mongolia.
VI
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.