t.

Mongolia is subject to China, and the Mongols' spiritual superior or
pope is the Dalai Lama. They have also a number of Lama monasteries, and
make yearly pilgrimages in large parties to Lhasa. An extraordinary
proportion of the male population of the country devote themselves to a
religious life and become monks. The Chinese are glad of it, for the
peaceful cloister life causes the formerly savage and warlike Mongol
hordes to forget their own strength. Services before the image of Buddha
in the temple halls lead their thoughts in other directions, and they
forget that their people once held the sceptre over almost all Asia and
half Europe. They do not remember that their forefathers, the Golden
Horde, forced their way seven hundred years ago through the Caucasus,
levied tribute throughout Russia, and alarmed all the rest of the West.
They have forgotten that their fathers conquered all the Middle Kingdom
and digged in yellow earth the Grand Canal on which the junks of the
Chinese still ply. The sword has rusted fast in its sheath, and the
Mongolian chiefs, whom the Chinese call vassals or dependent princes,
encamp peacefully on the steppes under their eight _bans_.

The Mongols are nomads. They own large flocks of sheep and goats, and
live on mutton, milk, butter, and cheese. Among their domestic animals
are also the two-humped camel and a small, hardy, strongly built horse.
Their life is a perpetual wandering. They move with their flocks from
one steppe to another. If the herbage is dried up in a district, or
all the pasture is eaten up, they put their tents on camels and set out
to find better grazing. Their tents are exactly the same as those of the
Kirghizes of the Pamir and the Kirghiz Steppe. They are shaped like
haycocks, and consist of a framework of tough ribs covered with black
felt.

[Illustration: PLATE XVIII. GATE IN THE WALLS OF PEKING.]

The Mongols are a good-tempered and amiable people. I made acquaintance
with them on the outskirts of their wide domain, and once I travelled
right through Mongolia. My starting-point was Peking, and my direction
due north-west. It was in the end of March and the beginning of April,
1897. At that time the Trans-Siberian Railway was not completed farther
than to Kansk, a small town east of the Yenisei. That was the longest
drive I ever took in my life, for from Peking to Kansk the distance is
1800 miles, and I only rested a day on the whole journey, namely at
Irkut