From Pekin to Calais by Land

by Harry De Windt

The Cossack colonel was a character. I verily believe he slept in his uniform, spurs and all. His duties appeared light enough. It is not a great tax on a man’s energy to command and drill six men, yet was he by no means content with his lot. Often (after dinner) when the good old Consul had exhausted his Central Asian anecdotes, and retired to his books and fishing flies, our military friend would fling open his tunic, and, throwing himself at full length on an easy chair, bewail his fate, and curse the ill-luck that had ever brought him to Ourga. “What a place! What pigs, these Mongols!” he would cry in execrable French, at the same time pouring down draughts of fiery Vodka that would have made any one but a Russian purple in the face. “Ah! mes amis! you are fortunate, you go to Kiakhta! Beautiful Kiakhta! What fun! What gaiety! What women! Ah! mon dieu! Would that I could accompany you!” Occasionally, very late in the evening, he would pull out of his tunic and kiss with much effusion a tawdrily-coloured miniature of a lady with a countenance as of the rising sun, and what looked like two large black holes for eyes. “I shall marry her some day,” he would say, gazing pensively at the portrait, while his eyes filled with tears——and Vodka. “Some day, my little Olga, you will be mine.” I never interrupted our military friend’s rhapsodies, or inquired as to her stature, but, judging from length of face and size of feature, Olga must have been misshapen if she stood anything under six foot high in her stockings.

We rode through Ourga next day, and found it a dull, unpicturesque city. There are no shops or stalls in the streets, none of the colour and movement that make most Oriental places so picturesque. A more melancholy, depressing place I have seldom seen; one sees nothing on all sides but palisades about nine feet high, rough pine-tree stems, stuck into the ground close together, and thickly plastered together with clay. The dwellings of the inhabitants are almost entirely hidden by these rough wooden walls. The thousands of brilliantly coloured prayer-flags, covered with Mongolian and Tibetan characters, give a spurious look of gaiety to the place, which is soon dispelled upon looking around again at the silent, desolate-looking streets. The latter, though unpaved, were clean and regularly laid out, debouching frequently into open spaces of waste land, or squares. Erected in most of the latter were a number of open sheds, with what looked like huge wooden barrels inside them, but which we afterwards discovered were prayer-wheels, hollow cylinders filled with prayers and petitions to Buddha. We must have seen over a thousand of these scattered about Ourga, for public use. They varied considerably in size, from those ten to twelve feet high, great ponderous things that took three or four men to turn them, to others not longer than a man’s hand, affixed to the street corners. These wheels are never at rest, men and women pause, as they hurry along the streets, to give a turn to each as they pass them, and as one encounters one every twenty yards or so, the amount of prayers turned out during the day in Ourga must be something enormous. Prayer in Mongolia is all done by motive power, and we noticed water-wheels and windmills thickly covered with sacred characters. None of the people dreamt of passing one in the street without giving it a turn. Some seemed to make up praying parties; for we once saw two women and three men, grinding away at a big wheel near the Kootookta’s palace, for at least half an hour without cessation. Some of the more devout turned miniature wheels in the left hand, while they pushed round the bigger ones with the right.

Thoughts of death and of a future state are the chief topics of conversation in this weird city, and religious ceremonies and duties form the chief occupation of the inhabitants, who go about their business, in solemn silence and with long faces that contrast strangely with the gaudy dresses and ornaments in which they are clad. A Mongol may be as cheerful and boisterous as he pleases in the desert, but once in the capital he must put on his best clothes, and observe a reserved, silent manner in accordance with the solemn surroundings. Many of the women were beautifully dressed and covered with handsome gold and silver ornaments. They had in Ourga a curious way of dressing the hair, that we had not seen in the desert. A head-dress of solid silver, studded with coral and turquoise, fits flat, and closely to the head. From under this their hair was brought out at right angles to the head in a solid band about six or seven inches broad: This was kept stiff by a plentiful application of mutton fat and other substances, and kept out by three broad wooden bands. At the shoulders it was gathered up and allowed to fall down in front of each shoulder in a single plait. Their painted faces, flat noses, and beady black eyes, in conjunction with this strange head-dress, gave them a most grotesque appearance, and utterly spoilt any pretension to good looks they may have had, although with the exception of Tsaira, I did not see a single good-looking woman or girl throughout Mongolia. Ourga is said, notwithstanding, to be the most immoral city, of its size, in the world.

Perhaps one of the most curious characteristics of Ourga is the silence that reigns. There is here none of the hum or bustle usually found in a place where some thousands of human beings are gathered together. No sound, even at mid-day, breaks the solemn stillness but the eternal creak of prayer-wheels and tolling of deep-toned gongs, save when a discordant blast of horns announces the celebration of some ceremony at the Kootookta’s Palace, or a tea-caravan jingles and rattles noisily through the quiet streets and squares on its way to Siberia or China.

The chief products of Ourga appeared to be beggars and dogs. The latter are exceptionally large and ferocious, so much so that Europeans always ride when obliged to go into Ourga. On foot one stands a very fair chance of being torn to pieces by the huge, savage brutes, who do not, however, harm or take any notice of the natives. The beggars fairly swarm——loathsome, abject wretches, many of them covered with sores, and quite naked. Wet or dry, hot or cold, they live in the open, subsisting on alms, or whatever offal they can pick up. We saw two or three lying dead by the roadway. No one seemed to take any notice of the corpses save dogs and vultures. Thousands of the latter perpetually hover over Ourga, the largest I have ever seen, and as bold as brass. It is a common thing to see people returning from market have their provisions snatched out of their hands and carried off by the huge birds. I could not believe this, till I saw it myself. No one harms them. The first precept of Buddhism is “Thou shaft not kill,” and although this rule is sometimes broken in the desert, an infringement of it in the city of the Kootookta would meet with summary punishment.

The palace of the Kootookta and Lamasery or Buddhist monastery are the only buildings of any size or importance in Ourga. We managed to get permission, through M. Shishmaroff, from the Grand Lama of Mongolia to visit the temple attached to the palace. We were very curious to see the Kootookta himself, but one might as well have tried to gain admission to the presence of the Emperor of China. He was moreover absent on a pilgrimage to a mountain shrine, some hundred miles off, during our stay.

The temple itself is a whitewashed, wooden building, with a pink and blue striped dome, surmounted by a huge gilt ball. There are no windows. It was some time on entering before we could make out the huge figure of Buddha; for two guttering oil wicks only just made darkness visible. The idol, which is of gilt bronze, and represented seated, is one of the largest in the world. I could not ascertain its exact height, but we measured one of the hands, and found it six feet long, while the rest of the body is in the most perfect proportion. Surrounding it were five life-sized wooden figures in Mongol dress, which startled one not a little at first, they looked so like human beings in the dim light, their faces and hands being made of wax and painted flesh colour. Ranged round the walls from floor to roof were a thousand small gilt idols, each in its own glass-covered niche, while from the dome hung some twenty or thirty large silk prayer-flags beautifully worked with Tibetan and Mongolian characters in gold. Some were fairly rotting with age. At the right of the figure stood the Kootookta’s throne, a tawdry-looking light green erection thickly covered with ill-painted flowers and landscapes, like a shooting-gallery at a fair, which detracted not a little from the beauty of the place. We could not see the face of this huge figure, which was lost in the darkness high up in the dome, but M. Shishmaroff told us it is of great beauty. Where this huge figure was cast or how it ever got to Ourga, does not transpire. It is of enormous antiquity, and was placed there long before the “White Barbarian” ever set foot in these regions.

Two yellow-clad Lamas, with shaven heads and bare feet, came in as we were leaving, to trim the lamps and collect the alms and offerings that had been left at the feet of Buddha during the day. They seemed rude, ill-conditioned fellows enough, and by no means pleased to see us, nor did the rouble which Petroff gave them elicit anything but a sulky grunt of thanks. “Canaille va!” said the Cossack, with a fierce twist of his moustache, as we emerged into the open air, “we shall teach you a lesson some day,” a remark that set me thinking. There is probably no race so jealous of its religion and customs and so intolerant of a stranger’s interference as the Mongols. It was with the utmost difficulty that I managed to procure a small prayer-wheel about five inches long (although there were probably thousands of such in Ourga), and then only through the mediation of the Consul, to whom it was given, not sold to, by the owner. Though there are five or six of these miniature wheels in every tent, one never sees them exposed for sale, all being made in the Lama monasteries. It was getting dusk as we mounted our ponies to return to the Consulate. This seemed to be the favourite hour for prayer in Ourga, for the thirty or more large prayer-wheels in front of the temple were all in full swing, three or four men and women to each. The creaking and grinding of the spindles was deafening, while the two sloping wooden platforms in front of the palace, used for the purpose of public worship, were covered with prostrate forms at evening prayer.

A STREET PRAYER-WHEEL AT OURGA.