invasion. They only await, they say, the command of their Grand Lama to march direct upon Peking, and to regain an empire which they believe to be theirs, for the sole reason that it was formerly theirs. The Mongol princes exact from their subjects or slaves certain tributes, which consist in sheep, and here is the absurd and unjust regulation, in accordance with which this tribute must be paid:
The owner of five or more oxen must contribute one sheep: the owner of twenty sheep must contribute one of them; if he owns forty he gives two; but they need give no more, however numerous their flocks. As may be seen, this tribute really weighs upon the poor only; the wealthy may possess a great number of cattle without being obliged to contribute more than two sheep.
Besides these regular tributes, there are others which the princes are accustomed to levy on their slaves, on some extraordinary occasions; for instance, marriages, burials, and distant voyages. On these occasions, each collection of ten tents is obliged to furnish a horse and a camel. Every Mongol who owns three cows must pay a pail of milk; if he possesses five, a pot of koumis or wine, made of fermented milk. The owner of a flock of 100 sheep, furnishes a felt carpet or a tent covering; he who owns three camels must give a bundle of long cords to fasten the baggage. However, in a country where everything is subject to the arbitrary will of the chief, these regulations, as may be supposed, are not strictly observed. Sometimes the subjects are altogether exempted from their operation, and sometimes also there is exacted from them much more than the law decrees.
Robbery and murder are very severely punished among the Mongols; but the injured individuals, or their parents, are themselves obliged to prosecute the prisoner before the tribunals: the worst outrage remains unpunished if no one appears to prosecute. In the ideas of a semi-barbarous people, the man who attempts to take the property or life of any one, is deemed to have committed merely a private offence, reparation for which ought to be demanded, not by the public, but by the injured party or his family. Theses rude notions of justice are common to China and to Thibet; and for that matter, we know that Rome herself had no other until the establishment of Christianity, which caused the right of the community to prevail over the right of the individual.
Mongolia, generally speaking, wears a gloomy and savage aspect; the eye is nowhere recreated by the charm and variety of landscape scenery. The monotony of the steppes is only interrupted by ravines, by vast rents of the earth, or by stony and barren hills. Towards the north, in the district of Khalkhas, nature is more
animated; tall forests decorate the summits of the mountains, and numerous rivers water the rich pastures of the plains; but in the long winter season, the earth remains buried under a thick bed of snow. Towards the Great Wall, Chinese industry glides like a serpent into the desert. Towns arise on all sides. The Land of Grass is crowned with harvests, and the Mongol shepherds find themselves driven back northwards, little by little, by the encroachments of agriculture.
Sandy plains occupy, perhaps, the greater part of Mongolia; you do not see a single tree there; some short, brittle grass, which seems to have much difficulty in issuing from this unfruitful soil, creeping briars, a few scanty tufts of heath, such is the sole vegetation and pasturage of Gobi. Water is very rarely seen; at long intervals you meet with a few deep wells, dug for the convenience of the caravans that are obliged to cross this dismal tract.
In Mongolia there are only two seasons in the year, nine months for winter, and three for summer. Sometimes the heat is stifling, particularly on the sandy steppes, but it only lasts a few days. The nights, however, are almost invariably cold. In the Mongol countries, cultivated by the Chinese, outside the Great Wall, all agricultural labour must be comprehended within three months. As soon as the earth is sufficiently thawed, they hastily set to work, or rather they do nothing but touch the surface of the ground lightly with the plough; they then immediately sow the seed; the corn grows with astonishing rapidity. Whilst they are waiting for it to come to maturity, the men are incessantly occupied in pulling up the weeds that overrun the plain. Scarcely have they gathered in the harvest when the winter comes with its terrible cold; during this season they thresh the corn. As the cold makes vast crevices in the earth, they throw water over the surface of the threshing-floor, which freezes forthwith, and creates for the labourers, a place always smooth and admirably clean.
The excessive cold which prevails in Mongolia may be attributed to three causes:—to the great elevation of the country; to the nitrous substances with which it is strongly impregnated, and to the almost entire absence of cultivation. In the places which the Chinese have cultivated the temperature has risen in a remarkable degree; the heat goes on increasing, so to speak, from year to year, as cultivation advances; so that particular grain crops, which at first would not grow at all, because of the cold, now ripen with wonderful success.
Mongolia, on account of its immense solitudes, has become the haunt of a large number of wild animals. You see at every step, hares, pheasants, eagles, yellow goats, grey squirrels, foxes and