From Pekin to Calais by Land

by Harry De Windt

The palace, an imposing brick building of Tibetan architecture, stands hard by the temple, with which it is connected by a covered way built to screen the Kootookta from the vulgar gaze, when he goes to his devotions or a council of Lamas. The residence of the human god is handsome, though somewhat gaudy, its white façades being picked out with blue, crimson, and gold. The approach is through two archways of Chinese architecture, at thirty yards’ interval, richly carved and coloured light green and vermilion. It is only in winter that the Kootookta lives in the capital. In early spring he is taken in state by the Lamas to his summer palace, about five miles away, on the banks of the clear, swift-running Tola and under the very shadow of the sacred mountain. Here the time is spent in prayer and meditation till the return of autumn.

We rode past some tents pitched on the open space in front of the palace, an encampment of pilgrims which had arrived in Ourga the week before from Manchuria. One tent, that of their chief, was of green silk, and richly ornamented with gold hangings inside and out. They seemed cheery, good-tempered fellows, and gave us a pleasant “good night” as we passed them, seated outside their tents discussing the evening meal round their camp fires. Half a dozen camels and a couple of ponies formed their caravan. They had taken more than three months to do the journey, and were setting out again to return home the following day.

The day had been close, and a shower of rain towards sundown had made the atmosphere steamy and depressing, as we rode slowly home through the twilight to the Consulate. It was Petroff who first called my attention to a faint sickly odour I had noticed on and off all the afternoon during our peregrinations, a hot pungent smell as of decaying matter, which I had detected in my bedroom at the Consulate the day before, and which seemed to pursue one everywhere in and about Ourga. “You had better light a cigarette,” said the colonel, offering me his case. “It is always worse on these damp evenings.”

“Do you mean to say the Consul has not told you of our Golgotha,” he continued, as soon as we were fairly alight, in reply to my innocent query of how “it” was occasioned. “Why, it is the sight of the place. There is just time before dinner; we will ride home that way.”

I was no longer surprised after my visit to “Golgotha,” as Colonel Petroff facetiously termed the place where hundreds of corpses lay rotting above ground, that the city of Ourga did not smell as sweet as one could wish. My only surprise is, after visiting the spot in question, that plague is not always raging in a city where the inhabitants never dream of burying their dead, but carry them to a spot not three hundred yards from the gates, and there let them slowly decompose in the open air.

It would be impossible to imagine a more horrible spectacle than met our eyes on arriving at Golgotha, an open space or cleft between two low green hillocks just outside Ourga, a valley literally crammed with corpses in every stage of decomposition, from the bleached bones of skeletons that had lain there for years, to the disfigured, shapeless masses of flesh that had been living beings but a few days or hours ago. The moon shed a pale, unearthly light over the grinning skulls and grey, upturned faces of the dead, some of whom lay stark and stiff just as they had been left by their friends, others with their blue shrouds ragged and torn, with disfigured faces and twisted limbs, lying in the horribly grotesque positions in which the dogs or wolves had dragged them. Near us was the body of a woman that had lain there but a few hours, Petroff said, judging from the clean and untorn appearance of her shroud. A little further off a number of huge dogs were fighting and snarling over the remains of a child. Overhead great carrion birds were flapping their huge black wings, occasionally swooping down, with a hoarse croak, to bury beak and talon in some newly arrived corpse. The very ground we trod was composed of human bones which crunched under our ponies’ feet as we rode a short distance up the narrow, ghastly defile. The stench was awful. I can never think of the place even now without a shudder, and devoutly wish I had never seen it.

A Mongol when ill has but a poor chance of recovery in Ourga. He had far better be alone and deserted in the plains than handed over to the tender mercies of the Death Lamas. There is a house or shed in Ourga near the Lamasery specially set apart for the dying, for it is considered the worst possible luck for a Mongol to die in his own tent. The dwelling, should this occur, is looked upon as accursed for evermore, and its inmates shunned like lepers by their neighbours. Thus it frequently happens that a poor wretch is bundled off without ceremony to the “dying shed” long before there is any need for it. As the “Death Lamas,” who receive him, do everything for the cure of his soul and nothing for the good of his body, the invalid has a bad time of it. It is not considered the proper thing to leave the “Death Chamber” alive, and few do so, however slight their ailment when they are once admitted. We tried hard, but were not allowed to enter the sacred precincts, nor is any one who is not of the Buddhist faith and in extremis. The outside world is therefore ignorant of the rites and ceremonies practised therein by the Lamas, but the tortures suffered by the unhappy patients is pretty apparent to any passer-by, judging from the groaning and moaning that we heard issuing from this gruesome dwelling. When dead, everything the patient possesses becomes the property of the Lamas who have attended him. He is stripped naked, wrapped in a coarse blue cotton shroud, and given up to his friends, who bear him away to Golgotha, and there leave him to the mercy of the elements, dogs, and vultures. Instances have been known of men and women recovering and returning from the ghastly spot to their homes. The Mongol is, at any rate, free from an evil which always more or less threatens us of superior civilization——that of being buried alive.

I had not much appetite for dinner that evening, a meal we always partook of strictly à la Russe, which means, literally speaking, any amount of rich, greasy food, but no drink to wash it down with. However thirsty one might be, wine, beer, and water were tabooed from the dinner and breakfast table. Each guest had his small liqueur-glass, but no tumblers, or wine-glasses. In front of the Consul stood a miniature battery of Vodka, Kümmel, and brandy bottles, and on these he rang the changes, replenishing our glasses with the contents of one or the other till the close of the meal, when the hissing Samovar was brought in and tea brewed. Our mouths by this time resembled a burning fiery furnace, and one was glad of a draught of the cup that cheers, hot and unrefreshing as it was. Sometimes “Koumiss,” or fermented mares’ milk, was handed round, a drink of which the colonel and Consul partook largely, but the violent attack of indigestion that half a glass brought on deterred me from ever drinking the vile stuff, which tastes exactly like butter-milk gone bad twice. It was not till bedtime that we were really able to slake our thirst with a cool draught of our own whisky and water from the bedroom decanter. This strange custom seemed to prevail throughout Siberia. Thirst is a sensation apparently unknown to Russians, and I never saw either the Consul or Petroff drink wine except when once, after a more than usually late night, the latter opened a bottle of champagne the following morning in our honour, and to drink to his speedy union with the fair Olga.

We visited Maimachin the following day. Kiakhta and other frontier-towns all have their Maimachins, a name derived from two Chinese words signifying “Maima,” trade, and “Ching,” town, for it is here that the Mongols purchase their stores, clothing, and provisions. Although distant only a mile from the capital, there are probably no two places in the world so utterly different in appearance and character as these. Of the ten thousand inhabitants, eight thousand at least are Chinese, merchants of various kinds, and all men. There is not a Chinese female of any sort or kind in the place, for the latter are forbidden by the laws of their country to accompany their husbands or male relatives into Mongolia, or indeed to go anywhere north of the Great Wall of China. The consequence of this is that many of the Maimachinites have intermarried with Mongol women, a circumstance that debars them from ever again entering the Chinese empire without special permission from the Court of Pekin.

Maimachin is a neatly-built town enclosed in a brick-battlemented wall about fifteen feet in height. The streets were, like those of all Chinese cities, abominably dirty, but it presented for all that a very favourable contrast to sad, sombre Ourga. The houses are of brick for the most part, well-built, substantial dwellings with gardens and courtyards, while on the outskirts of the city trees (planted by the ever-industrious Chinaman) and carefully tended market and flower gardens relieve the monotony of the dead green plain. A Chinaman much resembles a Frenchman in one respect; put him into a swamp in Mid-Africa, and he will make his immediate surroundings ornamental, or at any rate as pretty as circumstances will allow.