THE TALE OF A TOUR IN

MONGOLIA

CHAPTER I

"What is outside the world, daddy?"

"Space, my child."

"But what is outside space then?"

T HE fascination of the unknown, a deep love of the picturesque, and inherent desire to revert awhile to the primitive – these were probably some of the factors that made a little tour in Mongolia so essentially desirable to me at a period when, instead of turning my face homewards, I merely felt the compelling desire for more. The remark, "Such a pity you did not come here before the old order of things passed away," had assailed my ears like minute-guns throughout my eighteen months in China, and here in Mongolia was at last an opportunity of meeting with mediævalism untouched.

The most delightful, and by far the most interesting, expedition that lures the traveller for a couple of days from the gaiety of life in Peking, is that which leads him out to the Ming tombs and a little farther on to meditate upon change and decay from the summit of the Great Wall. The Great Wall may well have been the ultimate goal of all his wanderings in China, a goal indeed at which to pause and reflect upon all he has learned and seen through the months spent in journeying up from the turbulent south to the heart of China in the north. But even so it is a little disappointing upon arriving at the Nank'ou Pass to be informed that this, impressive though it be, is merely a relatively modern branch of the Great Wall itself, added no less than 1700 years later to the original construction. To see the real Great Wall then, the wall that has withstood the ravages both of Huns and Tartars, the wall that played a not unimportant part in warfare two centuries before the Christian era – this furnished me at least with an excuse to get away to Kalgan; and in a visit to Kalgan, the starting-point for the historic caravans which penetrate the desert, across which prior to the existence of the Trans-Siberian railway all merchandise passed to the north, I foresaw the germ which might, with a little luck, blossom out into a little expedition across the frontier.

At Dr. Morrison's hospitable board, to which drift inevitably those travellers who want something more than the social round and the sights provided for the globe trotter in Peking, I was fortunate in meeting a couple of Norwegian missionaries who were good enough to make arrangements for me to stay in their compound at Kalgan. The husband, after many years' work, had abandoned the hope of converting the Mongols to Christianity, and had placed his unique knowledge of the people and of their country – doubtless in return for a handsome salary (on paper) – at the disposal of the new Chinese Government. In common with every one else to whom I mentioned my project of travelling in Mongolia, these good people did their best to put me off, but finally, seeing that I intended to carry out my idea willy-nilly, they helped me in making my plans, engaged the Chinese who accompanied me, and lent me the various accessories of camp life, etc., in the most generous manner possible.

For some weeks past threatenings and rumours of war had been dribbling in from various points on the Mongolian frontier. Mongol soldiers (converted robber bands) in ridiculously small numbers, but effectual, as having been armed and trained by "the Urga government," which to all intents and purposes is another name for Russian officers, were said to be marching south, "plundering everywhere and killing Chinese and Mongols without distinction".

The Chinese in Peking were doubtless growing uneasy, and the following paragraph which appeared about this time in the "Peking Daily News," a Chinese-owned newspaper with an European circulation, suggests that the authorities were somewhat late in the field with their honours and encouragements for those Mongols who even now were perhaps flirting with presents of roubles from a more northern source. Already the storm was brewing past control:–

"The Bureau of Mongolian and Tibetan affairs (in Peking) reports that a petition from the Shang Chia Hut'ukt'u has been received, stating that the Shang Chodba has supported the Republican cause and requesting that he be rewarded.

"As Pa-yen-chi-erh-ko-la, the Shang Chodba and Dassak Da Lama, has been loyal to the Republic and is highly commendable, he is hereby permitted to sit on a Green Cart and to use Yellow Reins, as an encouragement."

No very highly imaginative mind is surely necessary to conjure up a scene of wonderful picturesqueness from the foregoing. To see a beaming "Da (or great) Lama" seated upon the shafts of his new Green Cart and driving a hefty white mule with his lately acquired Yellow Reins, feeling tremendously encouraged thereby in his loyalty to China, the recently established republic of Mongolia's suzerain it was worth while,