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Show i ' X. - "X t .v,...., - ,&f , ...... ;;&;.;;.(.;!:(!:::' ' .;' ; i .v' cb 1 ' 'A . irR Encampment of Nomad Tent Dwellers. THE wayfarer in China who turns south to Anglicized Hongkong Hong-kong multitudinous Canton or thai vivid hybrid of East and West, Shanghai, fails even to brush the strangest and most ancient mystery mys-tery of the dragon kingdom. That mystery liesin North China, an immemorial im-memorial mystery that wraps Peking like an Imperial mantle, a somber northern inscrutability that enfolds the great wull as impenetrably as the niisis obscuring its turrets, writes Olive Gilbreath in Asia. It is a mystery mys-tery sn, invincible that, once in "a man's blood, there is little choice left him but to follow its lure on and on, seeking its source in that hinterland still farther to the north. From the Great all one can gaze far over this unknown' land rushing swiftly away to the north, not days but months .by caravan the great plain of Mongolia. For the man gripped by this mystery of the nortbland. Kalgan, the border city between China and Inner Mongolia Mon-golia live hours to the north of Poking as the Chinese train crawls offers a convenient point 'of departure into Mongolia. Kalgan. lying at the foot of the pass, marks the end of the ancient caravan route between Siberia and China. Here all the wool and skins from the North are unloaded. Here Is quartered a Chinese garrison against a Mongolian uprising. Here the Russian tea trader pitches his blue tent. From here go the Russian overland mails. Here also are reloaded reload-ed the strings of camels for their return re-turn to the desert. Kalgan attempts to collect itself between a river and the pf.ss, but for dust it might be the desert itself. Small Chinese shops crowding the main street, worn into incredible ruts by generations of cartwheels, cart-wheels, complete the suffocation that is, if the wayfarer be abroad in July. Kalgan offers no Inns and the foreigner foreign-er must beg friends among the scattering scat-tering missionaries or claim the hospitality hos-pitality if the British-American tobacco tobac-co "mess." But roof-trees are wide and h'gh in those far corners, and the hospirality is of a heart-warming quality, such as lingers in the memory with a rare deliciousness. iou may ride into Mongolia a3 a free lance on horseback if you are not a pampered child of civilization. But If you have degenerated through the complexities of life under a roof unable to live on strings of oatmeal, cheese and meat, and unwilling to sleep In a Mongol tent you must be consigned to a caravan or a litter. Our equipages were least picturesque of all the choices a small caravan of Peking carts drawn not by camels, which are among the possibilities, but by horses and mules with a donkey thrown in on the side for good measure. meas-ure. The carts, larger than the usual blue Peking carts and padded with sacks of grain and "rufaos" of bedding covered with heavy mats, had been drawn up within the mud walls of the compound long before the first streak of the July dawn. On the Road to Urga. , We are out of the city now 'on that white road which crosses the plain for 30 days to Urga nnd for 60 days to Irkutsk in dry months a bowlder-strewn bowlder-strewn highway, in rainy months the bed of a torrent which rushes down between the bluffs, carrying men and luckless caravans before it. The ascent as-cent is gradual, almost imperceptible. Mud villages cling limpet-wise to the bluffs, the doors leading into only burrows bur-rows in the hillside. It is a"' of desert coloring as is the desert sun, white hot. But there Is a charm in that flickering monotonous road, like the charm of a peasant melody, and the call of the trail is In the air "over the world and under the world." At "tiffin" we came upon one of those charming little 'genres" to be seen often of-ten on Eastern roadways. In the scene were nn inn, mud-walled, and a court, also mud-walled, the entrance shaded by a wide-spreading plane tree. From the lower branches of the plane tree hung a bird-cage; beneath it, carters and coolies and hawkers of thrushes, peddlers and camel-drivers sprawled or lounged or squatted and smoked, the blue of Chinese garments lying exquisitelv cool against the bronze of Chinese skins in the chiaroscuro of shadow, shaply demarked from the glare of the road.' It stirred a strange emotion In me; perhaps an early race-memory, race-memory, an ancient nostalgia for this first home of the humen race. But there was no water for our beasts, and we must travel two Jj farther two-thirds two-thirds of an English mils. There, in the shadow of a doorway, we ate our first trail tiffin surrounded by half-j half-j clothed men and not in the least clothed children, who followed us en- thusiastically. Past a little gray wayside shrine, past tall mast like poles with their prayer flags drooping in the still air, the road led, striking suddenly a trail that emerged onto a small plateau. The sheer thrill of that little plateau, like a sharp upturning Chinese mirror! mir-ror! At the foot of the ascent lay a Bethlehem village. The mellow afternoon after-noon sunshine reflected in a small pool the whole a study in quietude. And beyond, rushing swiftly away to the North, our Promised Land, the great Mongolian plain. To the Top of the World. The ascent of the next morning was delayed by the appearance of a caravan cara-van of two-wheeled ox-carts-piled with .void, there where the pass notched the sky. But it was worth tlude-lay. tlude-lay. Whatever else slips from me through memory's net, it will not be those carts, for one supreme moment dominating the world, and then, like all things mortal, each losing the BU-i preme moment at the crest of things and plunging down the pass, lost in (lie dust below, while we ourselves took the uptrail to the top of the world. The top of the world! Beyond a vision of sky and plain, magnificent' open country rushing away gloriously' to the horizon and beyond. That Is the feel of Mongolia beyond-; vast, silent beyond. Something of desert beauty lay in its unbroken spaces, peace and healing and desert lnscrut-a" lnscrut-a" ility. It was of the desert and yet it was not desert. Its tawny monochrome mono-chrome was tinged with green, softened soft-ened by short, sparse grass through which a summer wind rustled, invit-; ing one to pleasant wanderings. The Tent Dwellers. We were now well up in fresh, un-trammeled un-trammeled land. There were nn fields, no houses, no villages, only, an occasional occa-sional encampment of black Mongol tents with its guard of dogs. True nomad's land. The black Mongol tents are made f layers of felt stretched on a collapsible collapsi-ble wicket of wood about four feet high, from which spokes of wood extend ex-tend to meet above at the top, the whole corded with stout ropes. There are no windows and the entrance consists con-sists of one low door. Against the walls of the tent stand bright chests of clothing, brass cooking vessels, rows of cheeses, a barrel of intoxicant intoxi-cant made from sour milk, and a small Buddhist shrine. Felt and fur rugs cover the earth floor and the low dais at the back which adds a Turkish look. On a center brazier tea simmers from morning till night, tea dnunk copiously copious-ly wilh butter and salt and a handful of millet. The whole is overhung with an indescribable .odor, Siberian but more so ; skins, cheese, smoke, horses, dogs, sheep, cows, tobacco, sour milk, incense to the gods and unwashed humanity, hu-manity, a combination into which the odors of Cairo might be carried as a perfume. The Mongol is darker in color than his Chinese neighbor, high-cheeked, squat, weather-beaten, almost protective protec-tive in coloring. Rarely, if ever, on a Mongol face is seen that fine intelligence intelli-gence which stnmps the Chinese ; the fact that he has produced no arts, no crafts, that he is a worker in no. medium, me-dium, is writ large in the crudity of his expression. As a Buddhist, he refuses refus-es to till the soil lest he take life kill a beetle, for instance. Sheep he may kill, however, since that may be accomplished accom-plished without Buddha's cognizance, back of the tent. Flocks have another advantage, too, over fields; flocks he may carry with him. And the Mongol knows no shades of a prison house 1 Give a Mongol a sheep rnd a horse and he will feed, clothe, hou-se himself and roam the plain. Add a cow am he can get drunk. Life has nothing more to offer. |