cursions.

As Kalgan is the frontier town between China and Mongolia, many
Mongols go there for all purposes, from trading down to loafing. They
bring their camels to engage in transporting goods across the desert,
and indulge in a great deal of traffic on their own account. They
drive cattle, sheep, and horses from their pastures farther north, and
sell them for local use, or for the market at Pekin. Mutton is the
staple article of food, and nearly always cheap and abundant. The
hillsides are covered with flocks, which often graze where nothing
else can live. In the autumn, immense numbers of sheep are driven to
Pekin, and sometimes the road is fairly blocked with them.

Every morning there is a horse-fair on an open space just beyond the
Great Wall, and on its northern side. The modes of buying and selling
horses are very curious, and many of the tricks would be no discredit
to American jockeys. The horses are tied or held wherever their owners
can keep them, and in the centre of the fair grounds there is a space
where the beasts are shown off. They trot or gallop up and down the
course, their riders yelling as if possessed of devils, and holding
their whips high in air. These riders are generally Mongols; their
garments flutter like the decorations of a scarecrow in a morning
breeze, and their pig-tails, if not carefully triced up, stand out at
right angles like ships' pennants in a northeast gale. Notwithstanding
all the confusion, it rarely happens that anybody is run over, though
there are many narrow escapes.

[Illustration: RACING AT THE KALGAN FAIR.]

The fair is attended by two classes of people--those who want to trade
in horses, and those who don't; between them they manage to assemble a
large crowd. There are always plenty of curbstone brokers, or
intermediaries, who hang around the fair to negotiate purchases and
sales. They have a way of conducting trades by drawing their long
sleeves over their hands, and making or receiving bids by means of the
concealed fingers. This mode of telegraphing is quite convenient when
secrecy is desired, and prevails in many parts of Asia. Taverneir and
other travelers say the diamond merchants conduct their transactions
in this manner, even when no one is present to observe them.

[Illustration: STREET IN KALGAN.]

Unless arrangements have been made beforehand, it will be necessary to
spend three or four days at Kalgan in preparing for the journey over
the desert. Ca