to one of the prison coffins. He was sentenced to remain a year;
but the old man would not have lived a month if Duke Loobitsan
Yangsen, with whom he had often hunted, had not obtained his
release. His independent spirit is by no means chastened, however,
and I feel sure that he will shoot another deer on the Bogdo-ol
before he dies!

Three days after his return home, my wife and I left with him and
three other Mongols on our first real hunt. Our equipment consisted
only of sleeping bags and such food as could be carried on our
horses; it was a time when living "close to nature" was really
necessary. Eight miles away we stopped at the entrance to a tiny
valley. By arranging a bit of canvas over the low branches of a
larch tree we prepared a shelter for ourselves and another for the
hunters.

In fifteen minutes camp was ready and a fire blazing. When a huge
iron basin of water had begun to warm one of the Mongols threw in a
handful of brick tea, which resembled nothing so much as powdered
tobacco. After the black fluid had boiled vigorously for ten minutes
each one filled his wooden eating bowl, put in a great chunk of
rancid butter, and then a quantity of finely-ground meal. This is
what the Tibetans call _tsamba_, and the buttered tea was prepared
exactly as we had seen the Tibetans make it. The tsamba, however,
was only to enable them to "carry on" until we killed some game; for
meat is the Mongols' "staff of life," and they care little for
anything except animal food.

The evening hunt yielded no results. Two of the Mongols had missed a
bear, I had seen a roebuck, and the old man had lost a wounded musk
deer on the mountain ridge above the camp. But the game was there
and we knew where to find it on the morrow. In the gray light of
early morning Tserin Dorchy and I rode up the valley through the
dew-soaked grass. Once the old man stopped to examine the rootings
of a _ga-hai_ (wild boar), then he continued steadily along the
stream bed. In the half-gloom of the forest the bushes and trees
seemed flat and colorless but suddenly the sun burned through an
horizon cloud, flooding the woods with golden light. The whole
forest seemed instantly to awaken. It was as though we had come into
a dimly lighted room and touched an electric switch. The trees and
bushes assumed a dozen subtle shades of green, and the flowers
blazed like jewels in the gorgeous woodland carpet.

I should have liked to spend the morning in the for