ed houses such as the well-to-do Chinese
build. But for the most part dull blank walls shut you out--or in. The
Chinese is an unwelcomed alien in Mongolia, and he knows it.

A strip of waste, treeless land, bare of everything save a group of
"chortens," that look like small pagodas, and a few yurts and sheds,
separates Mai-ma-chin from the Russian settlement which occupies the
highest part of the ridge, dominating everything in a significant way.
It centres in the consulate, a large white building surrounded by high
walls, but more prominent is the tall red Russo-Asiatic Bank close by.
Other buildings are a church and a few houses and shops. The Russian
Consulate also is well fortified, with the last contrivances for
defence,--walls, ditches, wire entanglements,--and it looks fit to stand
a siege.

Before reaching Urga proper, the Mongol or lama city, which lies about
three miles farther west, shut off from the others by a branch of the
Tola, you pass the headquarters of the Chinese governor, and he, too,
has entrenched himself behind strong earthworks. Ta Huren, the "Great
Encampment," as the Mongols call Urga, which is not a Mongol word at
all, but merely a modification of the Russian "urgo," a camp or palace,
is a network of palisaded lanes enclosing, not comfortable houses and
offices and banks, as in Mai-ma-chin, but temples and lamasseries. And
well within these is the most sacred spot of all, the lamassery where
dwells enthroned Bogdo or the Gigin, the Living Buddha ranking after the
Dalai Lama and the Tashi Lama only.

To Bogdo the Mongol millions look up as a god; he is the living
representative of the divine one; and the city where he lives is the
goal of thousands of pilgrims each year. And what do they see?--until
late years, just a feeble, untaught child. When the Bogdo dies, his soul
is reincarnated in the body of a newly born male child. For a hundred
years or more that child has been always Tibetan, not Mongolian;
probably the Chinese Government knows why. And the lamas who swarm the
sacred encampment, debased representatives of a debased religion,
probably could tell, if they would, why, in the past, the child has
never lived to be a man. Furthermore, the Russian Consul-General at Urga
probably knows the secret of the long life of the present incumbent, who
is well past the time that has proved so fatal to his predecessors.

Politics sordid and gruesome are active within the gaily decorated walls
of