fe and Mrs. MacCallie were
walking beside the river. Only a short distance from our tent they
discovered a dead Mongol who had just been dragged out of the city.
A pack of dogs were in the midst of their feast and the sight was
most unpleasant.

The dogs of Mongolia are savage almost beyond belief. They are huge
black fellows like the Tibetan mastiff, and their diet of dead human
flesh seems to have given them a contempt for living men. Every
Mongol family has one or more, and it is exceedingly dangerous for a
man to approach a _yurt_ or caravan unless he is on horseback or has
a pistol ready. In Urga itself you will probably be attacked if you
walk unarmed through the meat market at night. I have never visited
Constantinople, but if the Turkish city can boast of more dogs than
Urga, it must be an exceedingly disagreeable place in which to
dwell. Although the dogs live to a large extent upon human remains,
they are also fed by the lamas. Every day about four o'clock in the
afternoon you can see a cart being driven through the main street,
followed by scores of yelping dogs. On it are two or more dirty
lamas with a great barrel from which they ladle out refuse for the
dogs, for according to their religious beliefs they accumulate great
merit for themselves if they prolong the life of anything, be it
bird, beast, or insect.

In the river valley, just below the Lama City, numbers of dogs can
always be found, for the dead priests usually are thrown there to be
devoured. Dozens of white skulls lie about in the grass, but it is a
serious matter even to touch one. I very nearly got into trouble one
day by targeting my rifle upon a skull which lay two or three
hundred yards away from, our tent.

The customs of the Mongols are not all as gruesome as those I have
described, yet Urga is essentially a frontier city where life is
seen in the raw. Its natives are a hard-living race, virile beyond
compare. Children of the plains, they are accustomed to privation
and fatigue. Their law is the law of the northland:

". . . . That only the Strong shall thrive,
That surely the Weak shall perish and only the Fit survive."

In the careless freedom of his magnificent horsemanship a Mongol
seems as much an untamed creature of the plains as does the eagle
itself which soars above his _yurt_. Independence breathes in every
movement; even in his rough good humor and in the barbaric splendor
of the native dress.

But the little