r--The Celestials astonished--A nation of shop-keepers--Chinese
insurance and banking systems--The first letters of credit--Railways
in the empire--The telegraph in China--Pigeon-English--The Chinese
treaty

CHAPTER XXX.

The great cities of China--Pekin and its interesting features--The
Chinese city and the Tartar one--Rat peddlers, jugglers, beggars, and
other liberal professionals--The rat question in China--Tricks of the
jugglers--Mendicants and dwarfs--"The house of the hen's
feathers"--How small feet became fashionable--Fashion in America and
China--Gambling in Pekin--An interesting lottery prize--Executions by
lot--Punishing robbers--Opposition to dancing--The temple of
Confucius--Temples of Heaven and Earth--The famous Summer
Palace--Chinese cemeteries--Coffins as household ornaments--Calmness
at death

CHAPTER XXXI.

A journey through Mongolia--Chinese dislike to foreign travel--Leaving
Pekin--How to stop a mule's music--The Nankow Pass--A fort captured
because of a woman--The great wall of China--Loading the pack
mules--Kalgan--Mosques and Pagodas--A Mongol horse fair--How a
transaction is managed--A camel journey on the desert--How to arrange
his load--A Mongolian cart--A brisk trade in wood for coffins

CHAPTER XXXII.

Entering the desert of Gobi--Instincts of the natives--An antelope
hunt--Lost on the desert--Discovered and rescued--Character of the
Mongols--Boiled mutton, and how to eat it--Fording the Tolla river--An
exciting passage--Arrival at Urga--A Mongol Lamissary--The victory of
Genghis Khan--Chinese couriers--Sheep raising in Mongolia--Holy men in
abundance--Inconvenience of being a lama--A praying machine--Arrival
at Kiachta

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Departure from Kiachta--An agreeable companion--Making ourselves
comfortable--A sacred village--Hunting a wild boar--A Russian
monastery--Approaching Lake Baikal--Hunting for letters--"Doing"
Posolsky--A pile of merchandise--A crowded house--Rifle and pistol
practice--A Russian soudna--A historic building--A lake steamer in
Siberia--Exiles on shore--A curious lake--Wonderful journey over the
ice--The Holy Sea--A curious group--The first custom house--Along the
banks of the Angara--A strange fish--Arrival at Irkutsk

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Turned over to the police--Visiting the Governor General--An agreeable
officer in a fine house--Paying official visits--German in
pantomime--The passport system--Cold weather--Streets, stores, and
houses at Irkutsk