an. Only a few weeks earlier we had skimmed over
the rolling surface in motor cars, crossing in one day then as many
miles of plains as our own carts could do in ten. But it had another
meaning to us now, and the first night as we sat at dinner in front
of the tent and watched the afterglow fade from the sky behind the
pine-crowned ridge of the Bogdo-ol, we thanked God that for five
long months we could leave the twentieth century with its roar and
rush, and live as the Mongols live; we knew that the days of
discouragement had ended and that we could learn the secrets of the
desert life which are yielded up to but a chosen few.

Within twenty-five miles of Urga we had seen a dozen marmots and a
species of gopher (_Citellus_) that was new to us. The next
afternoon at two o'clock we climbed the last long slope from out the
Tola River drainage basin, and reached the plateau which stretches
in rolling waves of plain and desert to the frontier of China six
hundred miles away. Before us three pools of water flashed like
silver mirrors in the sunlight, and beyond them, tucked away in a
sheltered corner of the hills, stood a little temple surrounded by a
cluster of gray-white _yurts_.

Our Mongol learned that the next water was on the far side of a
plain thirty-five miles in width, so we camped beside the largest
pond. It was a beautiful spot with gently rolling hills on either
side, and in front, a level plain cut by the trail's white line.

As soon as the tents were up Yvette and I rode off, accompanied by
the lama, carrying a bag of traps. Within three hundred yards of
camp we found the first marmot. When it had disappeared underground
we carefully buried a steel trap at the entrance of the hole and
anchored it securely to an iron tent peg. With rocks and earth we
plugged all the other openings, for there are usually five or six
tunnels to every burrow. While the work was going on other marmots
were watching us curiously from half a dozen mounds, and we set nine
traps before it was time to return for dinner.

The two Chinese taxidermists had taken a hundred wooden traps for
smaller mammals, and before dark we inspected the places they had
found. Already one of them held a gray meadow vole (_Microtus_),
quite a different species from those which had been caught along the
Tola River, and Yvette discovered one of the larger traps dragged
halfway into a hole with a baby marmot safely caught. He was only
ten inches long and