and we venture
too. Tchagan leads the way, I follow in the buggy, while the boy on the
pony brings up the rear, Jack swimming joyously close by. The first time
is great fun, and so is the second, but the third is rather serious, for
the river gets deeper and the current swifter each time. The water is
now almost up to the floor of the buggy, and the horse can hardly keep
his footing. I try to hold him to the ford, cheering him on at the top
of my voice, but the current carries us far down before we can make the
opposite bank.

Four times we crossed, and then we reached a ford that seemed
unfordable. Crowds are waiting, but no one crosses. Now and then some
one tries it, only to turn back, and an overturned cart and a drowned
horse show the danger. But we decide to risk it, hiring two Mongols, a
lama and a "black man," to guide our horses. One, on his own mount,
takes the big cart horse by the head; the other, riding my pony, leads
the buggy horse. Wang comes in with me and holds Jack. The crowds watch
eagerly as we start out; the water splashes our feet. First one horse,
then another, floundering badly, almost goes down, the buggy whirls
round and comes within an ace of upsetting, the little dog's excited
yaps sound above the uproar. Then one mighty lurch and we are up the
bank. Four times more we repeat the performance, and at last we find
ourselves with only a strip of meadow between us and Mai-ma-chin, the
Chinese settlement where we plan to put up. Clattering along the
stockaded lane we stop before great wooden gates that open to Tchagan's
call, and we are invited in by the Mongol trader who, warned of our
coming, stands ready to bid us welcome.

CHAPTER XIV

URGA, THE SACRED CITY

Urga the Sacred City, the home of the Gigin, the Living God, third in
the Buddhist hierarchy, is not so much one city as three, all located on
a high ridge above the Tola. Each is distinct, separate, entrenched.
Arriving from the south, the one you reach first is Mai-ma-chin, the
Chinese trading settlement, a tangle of small houses and narrow lanes
hemmed in by stockades of wooden slabs and unbarked fir trees. Here are
the eight or ten thousand Chinese who control the trade of North
Mongolia. Apparently they make a good living, for there is a prosperous
bustle about the place, and as you pick your way over the mud and filth
of the streets, through open doorways you catch glimpses of courts gay
with flowers and gaudily decorat