ected, in default of camels, by these small
two-wheeled chariots. A few bars of rough wood are the only materials
that enter into their construction, and they are so light that a child
may lift them with ease. The oxen that draw them, have all a little iron
ring passed through their nostrils; to this ring is a cord, which
attaches the animal to the preceding chariot; thus all the carriages,
from the first to the last, are connected together, and form a long
uninterrupted line. The Mongol waggoners are generally seated on the
oxen, very rarely on the carriage, and scarcely ever on foot. On all the
chief roads you meet with these long lines of carriages, and long before
you see them, you hear the lugubrious and monotonous sound of the great
iron bells, which the oxen carry suspended from their neck.

After drinking a cup of tea with the Mongols whom we had met in the
mountain, we proceeded on our way; the sun was on the point of setting,
when we set up our tent on the margin of a stream about a hundred yards
from the Lamasery of Tchortchi.

[Picture: Chapter tailpiece]

[Picture: Lamasery of Tchortchi]

CHAPTER IV.

Young Lama converted to Christianity--Lamasery of Tchortchi--Alms for the
Construction of Religious Houses--Aspect of the Buddhist
Temples--Recitation of Lama Prayers--Decorations, Paintings, and
Sculptures of the Buddhist Temples--Topography of the _Great Kouren_ in
the country of the Khalkhas--Journey of the _Guison-Tamba_ to Peking--The
_Kouren_ Of the Thousand Lamas--Suit between the Lama-King and his
Ministers--Purchase of a Kid--Eagles of Tartary--Western
Toumet--Agricultural Tartars--Arrival at the Blue Town--Glance at the
Mantchou Nation--Mantchou Literature--State of Christianity in
Mantchouria--Topography and productions of Eastern Tartary--Skill of the
Mantchous with the Bow.

Although we had never visited the Lamasery of Tchortchi, we,
nevertheless, knew a good deal about it from the information that had
been given us. It was here that the young Lama was educated who came to
teach M. Gabet the Mongol language, and whose conversion to Christianity
gave such great hopes for the propagation of the gospel among the Tartar
tribes. He was twenty-five years of age when he quitted his Lamasery, in
1837; there he had passed fourteen years in the study of Lama books, and
had become well acquainted with Mongol and Mantchou literature. He had
as