We had left the caravan at nine o’clock. It was past ten when, passing the Chinese town of Maimachin, the green roof and gilt balls and crosses of the Russian Consulate came in sight, a handsome stone building, in a spacious garden, just outside the tented city. The day was bright and beautiful; as we galloped through the crisp clear air, our ponies’ feet rattling along the sound and springy turf, our spirits rose at the thought that our desert journey was really over, that the neck of the voyage was (as we thought) broken. Ignorance, in this case, was indeed bliss!
At a short distance, Ourga presents the appearance of some huge fair. The white tents, blue and gold temples, and gaudy prayer-flags, gave us at first sight a pleasing impression of the place, which was, however, speedily dispelled on closer acquaintance with its dismal-looking streets, deserted save by beggars and dogs, and the hideous customs practised day and night by its strange population.
We soon reached the gates of the Russian Consulate, and I pulled the heavy, clanging courtyard bell with a sense of relief, thinking that a few minutes more would see us consoled for the discomforts of our thirty days’ journey with a brandy-and-soda, or its Russian substitute in the cool, shady reception-room, a glimpse of which we had caught while riding past the front of the house. A stalwart Cossack answered our summons. He was a rough, surly fellow. My knowledge of the Russian language is limited, but I knew enough to understand that M. Shishmaroff was away——that no one knew when he would return——and that he should have the letter (which in despair I was holding out) when he did. With this information, given with scant courtesy, the military janitor calmly proceeded to shut the door in our faces. Luckily for us, however, the arrival of a third party on the scene completely changed the aspect and position of affairs, the new comer being no less than our sulky friend’s wife, a burly, rosy-cheeked female of some forty summers, whose face it did one good to see after the bilious, yellow-cheeked dames of China and the Gobi. There was no mistaking this one——Russia——and Northern Russia too, was written in every line of it. She was indeed a friend in need. It was fortunate for us that the altercation at the gate had become loud enough to attract her attention, causing her to desist from the occupation she was engaged in, of washing her last-born at the pump, and hasten down to the gate to see what was the matter. Whether our personal appearance or the prospect of sundry kopeks did it, I know not, let us hope the former. The fact remains that in less time than it takes me to write it, she had hurled her lord and master on one side, flung wide open the gates, and led our ponies in. She then signed to us to dismount, and, taking us each by the hand, led us into a cottage situated in the centre of the courtyard, and about fifty yards distant from the Consulate.
The lady evidently, to use a vulgar term, wore the breeches, for the partner of her joys and sorrows offered no resistance whatever when she ordered him, after unsaddling and watering our ponies, to set off at once with my card and the letter of introduction to where M. Shishmaroff was staying on a shooting excursion some thirty versts off. The poor wretch went like a lamb, and I must own it was with some satisfaction that we saw our quondam enemy ride through the green gates and into the blazing sun while we sat in the cool red-tiled cottage, comfortably discussing a dish of ham and eggs and home-made bread, washed down by copious libations of quass, and topped up by a bowl of rich thick cream, which the good soul insisted on our drinking, whether we liked it or not. Think of this, O dyspeptics, and ponder when I add that we felt no ill effects. Such are the practical results of a month in the Gobi desert on the human frame and digestion.
The long sunny day wore slowly away. As we knew some hours must elapse before the sergeant could possibly return, Lancaster and I extended ourselves on many chairs, and with a box of excellent cigarettes (the sergeant’s) between us, settled down to a thoroughly lazy afternoon. The sensation of absolute quiet and rest was little short of delicious after the wear and tear we had been leading for nearly a month——days of dirt and discomfort, nights of sleeplessness and misery. It was worth all the hardship we had undergone to experience the sense of relief and rest that long, still summer’s day in the Russian Consulate at Ourga. It was hard to realize that one was still in the Chinese Empire. The clean cottage, with its cool red-brick floor, bright copper saucepans, chintz window-curtains, and flower-bedecked window-sills of to-day were such a contrast to the grimy smoke-discoloured yourts, stuffy, vermin-infested camel-carts of yesterday. I caught myself more than once wondering if the past voyage was not all a dream, from which I had awoke in some solitary wayside cottage in far-away England. The illusion was but slowly dispelled when waking from a somewhat heavy nap (for which the mixture of quass and cream was no doubt answerable), I found the goodwife bustling about among her pots and pans, two curly-haired, rosy-cheeked brats clinging to her skirts, and the kettle singing merrily on the hob.
The sergeant returned about six o’clock with a note from M. Shishmaroff, written in French, and begging us make ourselves at home in the Consulate till his arrival on the morrow, an invitation we were not slow to avail ourselves of. The caravan had by this time arrived, and we were able, after a delicious bathe, to get a complete change of clothes, a luxury we had not enjoyed for more than three weeks. We were one mass of bug and flea-bites from head to foot, but a little ammonia soon set this right. The portmanteaus, too, were swarming with camel-ticks, and the next morning was mainly devoted to fumigating and trying to get rid of these pests——no easy matter.
Though luxuriously furnished and fitted up with every modern appliance and comfort, the house of the Russian Consul at Ourga is a plain-looking stone building, with wings on either side, the one serving as a chapel, the other as quarters for the half-dozen Cossacks forming the Guard. The windows of the drawing-rooms looked on to a garden, spacious and well laid out. Roses, geraniums, heliotrope, mignonette, and other flowers grew in profusion along the borders of the neat gravel-paths, and round the little green wooden kiosk, where after dinner Lancaster and I drank our coffee and smoked cigarettes as we watched the sun set behind the sacred hills, and the white city grow grey in the dusk. A more picturesquely situated one can scarcely be imagined than Ourga, in the midst of a fertile green plain watered by the blue waters of the Tola, and surrounded by an amphitheatre of undulating wooded hills, conspicuous among them being the “Sacred Mountain,” with its dark fir-trees and little temples, where the buddhist hermits, tired of the pomps and vanities of the world, retire to spend their last days mortifying the flesh and turning prayer-wheels.
We went out before it grew quite dark, and had a look at the ponies. Both were enjoying the sweet fresh grass, and seemed as contented with their comfortable quarters outside as their masters were in. Little Karra, as soon as he saw us, gave a shrill neigh of welcome, and bucked away from us in a manner that speedily set my mind at rest on his account; while the gluttonous Chow never desisted for a second from the occupation that he was best fitted for, that of filling his inside. We passed the European cemetery on the way back, eight or ten roughly made graves, mere mounds of earth, with huge stones heaped on them to keep away the dogs. The crevices between were riddled with holes where rats had tried to get at the bodies. Only one grave boasted the smallest attempt at adornment, a white wooden cross with black letters, bearing the name and age of a young Russian girl who had died in Ourga a few weeks back. I could not help wondering if the poor child ever realized, during lifetime, that this lonely, neglected spot would ever be her last resting-place. The graves looked weird and uncanny in the dusk, and one was glad to leave the place and return to the Consulate; where, as we entered, we heard in the courtyard, the sharp, shrill words of command in Russian, as our friend the sergeant set the watch for the night. Even in the cosy, well-lit drawing-room it was hard to shake off the uncomfortable feeling of depression and undefined apprehension that never quite left one in Ourga. Whether it be the climate or surroundings of the place, I know not; but every European traveller who has visited the Mongolian capital mentions having experienced the same sensation.
M. Shishmaroff arrived next day, a spare, wizened little man about sixty years of age, clean-shaved, with long, wiry grey hair, and a complexion the colour of a walnut. Colonel Petroff, the commander of the Guard, a red-faced, burly Cossack officer, accompanied him. They had been away for a three days’ fishing expedition, and their baskets were laden with fine trout and “Tai-Ming” from the Tola. The latter is a species of large pike, but, unlike it, is caught only in running streams. It is delicious eating. Curiously enough, though this fish is caught throughout Siberia to the very foot of the Oural mountains on the Asiatic side, it is never found in European Russia.
Both our hosts gave us a true Russian welcome; and though the colonel spoke but few words of French, we mutually managed to supply by signs what we lacked in language. The Consul himself spoke French fluently. Although he had held the post he now occupied for more than twenty years, much of his early life had been spent in Central Asia, in the service of the Russian Government. “But I never wish to leave Ourga,” he said, when I one day casually remarked that the life must be rather a dull one for a man of his talents and culture. “I am passionately fond of my books. I enjoy the finest climate in the world. I am madly fond of fishing, and get as much as I want of the finest sport in the world in the Tola hard by. Above all, I am my own master, and as you English say, ‘Monarch of all I survey.’ What can a man wish for more?” And I could not but admit there was some truth in his reasoning.