d as blockhouses and are capable of withstanding long
sieges. Between the dugun and the monastery and nearer to the road I
made out the camp of some nomads. Their horses and cattle were nowhere
to be seen. Evidently the Mongols had stopped here for some time and
had left their cattle in the mountains. Over several yurtas waved
multi-colored triangular flags, a sign of the presence of disease. Near
some yurtas high poles were stuck into the ground with Mongol caps at
their tops, which indicated that the host of the yurta had died. The
packs of dogs wandering over the plain showed that the dead bodies lay
somewhere near, either in the ravines or along the banks of the river.

As we approached the camp, we heard from a distance the frantic beating
of drums, the mournful sounds of the flute and shrill, mad shouting.
Our Mongol went forward to investigate for us and reported that several
Mongolian families had come here to the monastery to seek aid from the
Hutuktu Jahansti who was famed for his miracles of healing. The people
were stricken with leprosy and black smallpox and had come from long
distances only to find that the Hutuktu was not at the monastery but had
gone to the Living Buddha in Urga. Consequently they had been forced to
invite the witch doctors. The people were dying one after another. Just
the day before they had cast on the plain the twenty-seventh man.

Meanwhile, as we talked, the witch doctor came out of one of the yurtas.
He was an old man with a cataract on one eye and with a face deeply
scarred by smallpox. He was dressed in tatters with various colored bits
of cloth hanging down from his waist. He carried a drum and a flute. We
could see froth on his blue lips and madness in his eyes. Suddenly he
began to whirl round and dance with a thousand prancings of his long
legs and writhings of his arms and shoulders, still beating the drum and
playing the flute or crying and raging at intervals, ever accelerating
his movements until at last with pallid face and bloodshot eyes he fell
on the snow, where he continued to writhe and give out his incoherent
cries. In this manner the doctor treated his patients, frightening with
his madness the bad devils that carry disease. Another witch doctor gave
his patients dirty, muddy water, which I learned was the water from the
bath of the very person of the Living Buddha who had washed in it his
"divine" body born from the sacred flower of the lotus.

"Om! Om!" both w