human habitations
that I have ever seen.

Three temples lie in a bowl-shaped hollow, surrounded by hundreds
upon hundreds of tiny pill-box dwellings painted red and white.
There must be a thousand of them and probably twice as many lamas.
On the outskirts of the "city" to the south enormous piles of
_argul_ have been collected by the priests and bestowed as votive
offerings by devout travelers. Vast as the supply seemed, it would
take all this, and more, to warm the houses of the lamas during the
bitter winter months when the ground is covered with snow. On the
north the hills throw protecting arms about the homes of these
half-wild men, who have chosen to spend their lives in this lonely
desert stronghold. The houses are built of sawn boards, the first
indication we had seen that we were nearing a forest country.

The remaining one hundred and seventy miles to Urga are a delight,
even to the motorist who loves the paved roads of cities. They are
like a boulevard amid glorious, rolling hills luxuriant with long,
sweet grass. In the distance herds of horses and cattle grouped
themselves into moving patches, and fat-tailed sheep dotted the
plain like drifts of snow. I have seldom seen a better grazing
country. It needed but little imagination to picture what it will be
a few years hence when the inevitable railroad claims the desert as
its own, for this rich land cannot long remain untenanted. It was
here that we saw the first marmots, an unfailing indication that we
were in a northern country.

The thick blackness of a rainy night had enveloped us long before we
swung into the Urga Valley and groped our way along the Tola River
bank toward the glimmering lights of the sacred city. It seemed that
we would never reach them, for twice we took the wrong turn and
found ourselves in a maze of sandy bottoms and half-grown trees. But
at ten o'clock we plowed through the mud of a narrow street and into
the courtyard of the Mongolian Trading Company's home.

Oscar Mamen, Coltman's former partner, and Mrs. Mamen had spent
several years there, and for six weeks they had had as guests
Messrs. A. M. Guptil and E. B. Price, of Peking. Mr. Guptil was
representing the American Military Attache, and Mr. Price, Assistant
Chinese Secretary of the American Legation, had come to Urga to
establish communication with our consul at Irkutsk who had not been
heard from for more than a month.

Urga recently had been pregnant with war possibi