We skirted for a time the precipitous mountain that lines the left bank of the Tola. Presently we came to an abrupt turn in the road; a glorious panorama of plain and wood, mountain and river, lay at our feet, and a couple of miles away a compact mass of red and white dwellings, golden domes, and snowy tents, surmounted and surrounded by thousands of brightly coloured-prayer flags, which flashed and waved in the sun with every breath of the pure morning air. We had reached the sacred city of Ourga.
[6]. A Mongol tent or encampment.
[7]. Woman.
CHAPTER VI.
OURGA TO KIAKHTA.
Ourga can scarcely be called a city in the true acceptance of the term. Its Mongol name, “Ta Huren,” or “The Great Encampment,” better describes the huge cluster of tents that compose the Mongolian capital, dwellings precisely similar in shape and size to those in the desert, save that here they are surrounded by rough wooden palisades, eight to ten feet in height, as a protection against the thieves and marauders who in the caravan season nightly infest the streets.
The population of Ourga, which is estimated at about 40,000, fluctuates a good deal. This is owing in a great measure to the nomad disposition of the inhabitants, who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, taking not only their goods and chattels, but also their house with them. With the exception of the Kootookta’s palace, an imposing edifice of Tibetan architecture, all white, gold and vermilion, like an ornament off the top of a twelfth-cake, there are but three brick houses in the place, residences of Russian tea-merchants, of whom, when we passed, there were seven residing in Ourga. These, with the half-dozen Europeans stationed at the Consulate, mid-way between Ourga and Maimachin, formed the entire European population of the capital of Mongolia.
Notwithstanding, Ourga is of no little importance as a trading centre, for it is the only stage in the tea-carrying trade between China and Russia, while it exports large quantities of hides, timber, and clothing throughout Mongolia. Ourga is the Mecca of the Mongol, and the distances travelled by the faithful for the privilege of gazing upon the features of their living god, the Kootookta, are sometimes incredible. Pilgrimages are made from Manchuria, nine hundred miles away, and a man arrived, while we were there, from the borders of Tibet, having accomplished the distance across the desert, a great part of it sandy waste, alone and on foot. The journey from Ourga to Lassa (Tibet) is made in great state by the Grand Lama of Mongolia on the death or transmigration of a Kootookta, to procure another from the “Dalai Lama” of Tibet. There are but two living deities in Mongol Buddhism. The Dalai Lama of Lassa, and Kootookta of Ourga. It is for this that the Mongolian capital is looked upon as the second sacred city of the world, Lassa, the capital of Tibet, being the first.
The present Kootookta is about eighteen years of age, lives, like the Emperor of China, a life of the strictest privacy, and is only exhibited to the faithful by the Lamas or priests in charge on very rare occasions. Though worshipped as a god, he is allowed no voice in the government of the country, which is entrusted to two viceroys, a Mongol prince and a Manchu Tartar from the court of Pekin. The latter keeps an eye on the sacred youth, and sees that he does not meddle with state affairs. Presumably also (as no Kootookta has ever been known to live over the age of twenty) attends to other little matters when the proper time comes.