we were outside the walls and making our
way along the dry bed of the Sha Shin Ho, I jumped out, and for most of
that day I either walked or rode the Mongol's pony. A Peking cart may
have other and better uses, but as an instrument of torture it is
unrivalled. Just as the thing was in Marco Polo's time, so it is to-day.
You crawl in on hands and knees, and then painfully screw yourself
round, and so sit cross-legged, or with feet outstretched if there is
room, your head only escaping the top as you crane your neck to catch
the view or to get a bit of fresh air. The driver sitting on the shafts
has much the best of it, and more than once I joined him,--very
unsuitable, of course.

The main trails that cross Mongolia from Kalgan to Urga are two. One,
the longer and better known, tends a little to the west, and is called
by various names, the "Mandarin Road" or "Relay" or "Cart Road." Along
its course are markets and Mongol settlements, and there are post or
relay stations at regular intervals. Hence it is preferred by the
Chinese caravan men as well as by the great, or those in a hurry, who
use relays. The other, known as the "Camel Road," turns northward from
Kalgan and after a hundred miles takes a northwestward course to Urga.
There are no Mongol settlements after you have passed the fringe of
villages bordering the Great Wall, and wells are few and far between,
but it is one hundred miles shorter than the more western route, and by
so much the better for those who go through with the same animals. Much
of the way is marked by the telegraph wire that now stretches its many
miles across the desert, but it would be rather unwise to trust entirely
to this guidance, for at times it leads where only winged things can
follow, and above all it never swerves to point out the wells along the
way, and missing one you might not reach another for twenty-four hours,
or perhaps never. As I was neither hurried nor privileged, I chose this
road.

Over one or the other of these trails pass thousands of carts and camel
trains each year, carrying north or south tea and cloth and notions and
hides and furs, to the value of many millions of taels. But most of
Mongolia's exports go on their own feet, ponies or cattle or sheep.

Under the treaties of 1858 and 1860 a post-route between the Russian
frontier and Kalgan was established, and in spite of the competing
railway through Manchuria, a horse-post still crosses the desert three
times