not yet ceased to wonder at the motor cars which cover as many
miles of plain in one day as their camels cross in ten. But what
_will_ they think when twenty men leave Kalgan at noon and dine in
Urga at seven o'clock that night! Seven hundred miles mean very
little to us now! The start has been made already and, after all, it
is largely that which counts. The automobile has come to stay, we
know; and motor trucks will soon do for freight what has already
been done for passengers, not only from Kalgan to Urga, but west to
Uliassutai, and on to Kobdo at the very edge of the Altai Mountains.
Few spots in Mongolia need remain untouched, if commercial calls are
strong enough.

Last year the first caravans left Feng-chen with wireless equipment
for the eighteen hundred mile journey across Mongolia to Urumchi in
the very heart of central Asia. Construction at Urga is well
advanced and it will soon begin at Kashgar. When these stations are
completed Kobdo in Mongolia, Hami in Chinese Turkestan and Sian-fu
in Shensi will see wireless shafts erected; and old Peking will be
in touch with the remotest spots of her far-flung lands at any time
by day or night.

These things are not idle dreams--they are hard business facts
already in the first stages of accomplishment. Why, then, should the
railroad be long delayed? It may be built from Kalgan to Urga, or by
way of Kwei-hua-cheng--either route is feasible. It will mean a
direct connection between Shanghai, China's greatest port, and
Verkhin Udinsk on the Trans-Siberian Railroad via Tientsin, Peking,
Kalgan, Urga, Kiakhta. It will shorten the trip to London by at
least four days for passengers and freight. It will open for
settlement and commercial development a country of boundless
possibilities and unknown wealth which for centuries has been all
but forgotten.

Less than seven hundred years ago Mongolia well-nigh ruled the
world. Her people were strong beyond belief, but her empire crumbled
as quickly as it rose, leaving to posterity only a glorious
tradition and a land of mystery. The tradition will endure for
centuries; but the motor car and aeroplane and wireless have
dispelled the mystery forever.

CHAPTER XIV

THE GREAT RAM OF THE SHANSI MOUNTAINS

Away up in northern China, just south of the Mongolian frontier, is
a range of mountains inhabited by bands of wild sheep. They are
wonderful animals, these sheep, with horns like battering-rams. But
the mountains are a