and hopes; I witnessed the whole
horror of their oppression and fear before the face of Mystery, there
where Mystery pervades all life. I watched the rivers during the severe
cold break with a rumbling roar their chains of ice; saw lakes cast up
on their shores the bones of human beings; heard unknown wild voices
in the mountain ravines; made out the fires over miry swamps of the
will-o'-the-wisps; witnessed burning lakes; gazed upward to mountains
whose peaks could not be scaled; came across great balls of writhing
snakes in the ditches in winter; met with streams which are eternally
frozen, rocks like petrified caravans of camels, horsemen and carts; and
over all saw the barren mountains whose folds looked like the mantle of
Satan, which the glow of the evening sun drenched with blood.

"Look up there!" cried an old shepherd, pointing to the slope of the
cursed Zagastai. "That is no mountain. It is HE who lies in his red
mantle and awaits the day when he will rise again to begin the fight
with the good spirits."

And as he spoke I recalled the mystic picture of the noted painter
Vroubel. The same nude mountains with the violet and purple robes of
Satan, whose face is half covered by an approaching grey cloud. Mongolia
is a terrible land of mystery and demons. Therefore it is no wonder that
here every violation of the ancient order of life of the wandering nomad
tribes is transformed into streams of red blood and horror, ministering
to the demonic pleasure of Satan couched on the bare mountains and robed
in the grey cloak of dejection and sadness, or in the purple mantle of
war and vengeance.

After returning from the district of Koko Nor to Mongolia and resting a
few days at the Narabanchi Monastery, we went to live in Uliassutai, the
capital of Western Outer Mongolia. It is the last purely Mongolian town
to the west. In Mongolia there are but three purely Mongolian towns,
Urga, Uliassutai and Ulankom. The fourth town, Kobdo, has an essentially
Chinese character, being the center of Chinese administration in this
district inhabited by the wandering tribes only nominally recognizing
the influence of either Peking or Urga. In Uliassutai and Ulankom,
besides the unlawful Chinese commissioners and troops, there were
stationed Mongolian governors or "Saits," appointed by the decree of the
Living Buddha.

When we arrived in that town, we were at once in the sea of political
passions. The Mongols were protesting in great