Our ponies were tied behind the carts, and all went quietly except my old one "Dolonor," who was sagacious enough to break his halter regularly, and follow the caravan in his own way, which was to trot a few hundred yards ahead and apply himself vigorously to the grass until the caravan had passed some distance, when he would trot up and repeat the operation. With all that he fell off in condition more than any of the others.
Starting at sunset, as I have said, we proceeded all night without stopping. It was a fine moonlight night, but an uncomfortable one for us. Not knowing we were to travel all night, we were unprepared for sleeping in our carts, and suffered a good deal from cold and disturbed rest. With every precaution to close them in, the carts are thoroughly well ventilated; but subsequent experience taught us to roll up warmly, for most of our nights in the desert were spent in our carts on the road.
At sunrise on the 28th my thermometer beside my bed stood at 43°. At 8 o'clock we halted and pitched our tents. Our Mongols had a tent for themselves, made of thin blue cotton stuff, and black inside with the smoke of years. Their contract with us included tent accommodation, as also fuel and water; but we congratulated ourselves daily on being provided with our own commodious and substantial bit of canvas. The Mongols make their fire in the tent and lounge round it while the pot is boiling. Some of the smoke manages to escape through the opening that answers the purpose of a door, running from the apex of the tent to the ground in the shape of a triangle. For the rest they don't seem to mind it, although it is almost suffocating to those who are unaccustomed to it. I noticed the eyes of the Mongols have mostly a bloodshot hard appearance, often showing no white at all, attributable no doubt to the argol smoke in which they pass so much of their time. The tents being pitched, the next operation is to procure a supply of argols, or more correctly ar'ch'l, which is dried cow or horse dung, and is to be found all over the desert. So long as we were in a populous part of the country, that is, if there were three Mongol yourts within as many miles of us, we were saved the trouble of going out to gather them, for our tents were seldom up for many minutes before a woman would appear bearing a large basket of the precious material. This seems to be the ordinary custom of the Mongols, and is a part of the genuine hospitality they show to strangers. Our halting-places were selected with a view to water. There is no scarcity of water in the desert, but a stranger would be sorely puzzled to find it, for there is nothing to mark the position of the wells. The Mongols have an instinctive knowledge of the country, and in order to encamp near good water they make their march an hour or two longer or shorter as the case may be. When the caravan halts, one of the Mongols is despatched on a camel with two water-buckets to fetch water from the well, generally some distance from the line of march. The buckets have a head to them with two holes in it stopped with wooden plugs. The water is poured out of the larger hole at the side, while the smaller one in the centre is opened to admit the air, to enable the water to pass out freely. In selecting a halting-place, the Mongols generally contrive to combine a good bit of pasture with the vicinity of water, for this is naturally of much importance to them, as the only feeding the animals get is a few hours' grazing during the halt, and that only once in twenty-four hours. Before the tent is set up the camels are unloaded and set free to graze, the horses are taken to water, and then hobbled and let loose. The camels are not supposed to want water, and they very rarely get it. Their lips and mouth are peculiarly adapted to quick feeding, the lips being long and very pliable, and the incisor teeth projecting outwards. They gather up a good mouthful of grass in a very short time, even where it is exceedingly scant, and as their food requires little or no mastication, they are enabled to take in a full daily supply of food in a few hours.
So far, Mongolia is a succession of plains and gentle undulations, much resembling the long swell of the ocean, and here and there the country is a little rough and hilly. The undulations stretch across our track from east to west. The whole face of the country looks like the sea. There is not a tree or any object to break the monotony of the vast expanse, but occasionally the yourt or tent of a Mongol family. The sunrise and sunset encourage the illusion, and the camel has been aptly called the ship of the desert.
The sun was hot during the day, but the thermometer in the shade only showed 73° at noon. Yesterday it was 71°. After dinner we went out with our guns and bagged a few small birds of the curlew kind. We also came across a flock of wild geese, but, as usual, they were very wild. We had a chase after a herd of animals which have been called wild goats. The Chinese call them whang-yang, or yellow sheep: other tribes call them dzeren. The Mongols give them a name of their own, gurush, and do not associate them with either sheep or goats. They are really a kind of antelope (Procapra gutturosa), the size of a fallow deer, and of a yellowish brown colour, approaching to white about the legs. They are exceedingly swift and very shy, and as the country is so flat it is almost impossible to get within shot of them. They are usually found in large herds of several hundreds. We subsequently tried to stalk them on horseback, and did get some long random shots at them with a rifle, but to manage this properly there ought to be three or four people well mounted and with plenty of time. Our poor tired ponies were not fit for such work, and we never stopped the caravan for the sake of sport. Some of the Mongols do hunt the gurush, both on horseback and on foot. I never witnessed any successes, but they must shoot them sometimes, to pay for their powder and shot. They use a small-bored rifle, which has a rest placed about six inches from the muzzle, by which means they can lie on their face and take their aim, the muzzle being raised well clear of the ground by means of the rest.
We had a long halt to-day, partly in consequence of a crack being discovered in one of the camels' feet. This is an infirmity they are subject to, and if sand and grit were allowed to get in, the animal would become lame and useless. The remedy, which is always at hand, is to sew a square patch of stout leather over the part affected, which they do in the roughest cobbler fashion. With a flat needle slightly curved they pierce the horny part of the sole, and fasten the patch by means of leather thongs at each corner. This is only a temporary measure, and when a camel is taken that way, he must soon be turned out to grass. The Mongols have no trouble in getting at a camel's feet. They first make him squat down, and then two of them go at him with a sudden push and roll him over on his broadside, one of them keeping his head down while the other operates on the foot. The animal screams a good deal while he is being turned over, but once down he resigns himself helplessly to his fate.
We did not get off till five o'clock in the afternoon. The night was cloudy and no dew fell, and consequently it was not nearly so cold as the night before. The difference in temperature between a cloudy and a clear night is very marked in Mongolia.
We were now leaving the good pastures and the numerous herds of cattle behind, and on the morning of the 29th August we found ourselves getting into a very desert country with only a little scrub grass, of which our poor ponies found it hard work to make a meal. No horses or cattle were seen in this part, and the country seemed only capable of supporting sheep and camels. About eleven o'clock we halted, and encamped on almost bare sand. Not a single "yourt" was in sight, and, for the first time, we had no visitors. This must have been a relief to our Mongols, for they were compelled by custom and their natural hospitality to receive and be civil to all comers, and it was not easy for them to snatch even an hour's sleep. This must have been a great privation, for their mode of travelling all night precluded their getting any sleep at all, except on the backs of their camels while on the march, and in their tent during the six hours' halt in the day; and as that was broken up by cooking and eating, pitching and striking tents, loading and unloading camels, and other necessary matters, and the frequent and protracted visits from neighbouring yourts, or travellers on the road, our poor Tartars had often to go for days together with hardly any sleep at all. But they never complained, and certainly were never betrayed into any rudeness to their inconsiderate countrymen.
We started again at 4.30 in the afternoon, and continued through gentle undulations, proceeding, as before, all through the night. Before morning we passed some rocky places over low hills, which sadly disturbed our sleep in the carts—in fact, our usual night's rest, while on the move, was far from being uninterrupted or comfortable, and it was only our fatigue and exposure to the air all day that enabled us to sleep at all under such circumstances. The rough hilly part was again succeeded by low undulations continually unfolding before us, and which became painfully monotonous to the eye. Distances are altogether deceptive, partly owing to the smooth, unbroken surface of the country, and partly to the mirage which is always dancing on the horizon, making small objects look large, and sometimes lifting them up into the air and giving them a variety of fantastic shapes.
About 11 o'clock on the 30th of August we halted, and went through our usual process of cooking and eating. We began to find that one meal a day did not suit our habits, and we soon learned to keep out a certain quantity of biscuit and cold meat when we had it, so that we could make a breakfast or a supper without stopping to unload the camels. To these materials we added a handful of tea or some chocolate-paste, and in the morning rode up on our ponies to any yourt we happened to see that was smoking, and there made our breakfast. In the evening we often managed to do the same, but it frequently happened that we had no opportunity of doing this.