From Pekin to Calais by Land

by Harry De Windt

The Temple of Confucius at Maimachin was a pleasant contrast to the gaunt, whitewashed structure of Buddha at Ourga. Though much smaller in dimensions, it was a model of symmetry and beauty, and embellished with carvings and sculpture which it seemed a sin to have covered with the eternal gold and vermilion so dear to every celestial’s heart. In front was a little courtyard overhung with weeping willows and paved with smooth grey tiles, round the edge of which ran broad beds of roses and mignonette, while in the centre a fountain plashed lazily into a basin of cool green water, covered with clusters of great white water lilies. Hung around the roof of the temple were hundreds of small gilt bells with sails attached to their clappers, which at the slightest breath of air produced a sweet musical sound. It was a relief to sit in this pretty cool retreat and forget for a while the dirty, dismal city with its leprous population and unburied dead not two thousand yards off!

Moses and Co. had only contracted to bring us as far as Ourga, so we now set about getting fresh camels for the journey to Kiakhta, a distance of over two hundred miles. We were not anxious to prolong our stay in Ourga. One walk through the city had more than satisfied our curiosity, and the unsavoury whiffs that came in at our open windows whenever the wind was blowing in from the direction of Golgotha, only made us the more anxious to hasten our departure, notwithstanding the kind and pressing invitation of our good-natured friend and guide, Petroff, to stay a few days longer and have some trout-fishing, a sport I have never been particularly fond of, though I believe it is to be had in perfection in the waters of the Tola, judging from the large basketsful M. Shishmaroff brought in almost daily.

We procured camels with less difficulty than I had anticipated, though not without a good deal of haggling and discussion as to price with the greasy old Mongol whose property they were. The old robber insisted on payment beforehand, and insisted on its being made in brick tea, which gave us an enormous amount of trouble and annoyance. We managed it at last, with the aid of M. Shoolingin, a Russian tea-merchant, but the calculation entailed a consumption of tea, Vodka, and cigarettes that gave us a headache for two days afterwards! It took us nearly three hours to convert our Kalgan bills into the requisite amount of the awkward countersome material that passes current for coin in Ourga and throughout Mongolia. The tea is of the coarsest kind. After being submitted to a pressing and drying process, it is cut up into bricks of 25 cents, 50 cents, and $1 value. The latter are nearly two feet long. The cost of the camels for our journey to Kiakhta was $35, so the old Mongol had to call in two others to help him carry away his spoil, under which he staggered away with a grin and a leer that made us doubt whether he had not swindled us, which we afterwards discovered he had to the amount of some $15. Bank-notes have lately been introduced by the Russian tea-firms in Ourga, representing so many bricks of tea each. These would do away with much of the difficulty attending the carting about of the present heavy, clumsy currency, but the natives will have nothing to do with them.

We left Ourga at 5 a.m. on the morning of the 3rd of August. Our caravan was now considerably reduced in size, for it needed but four camels (besides the two for the carts) to carry our few remaining stores. Early as it was, the Consul and Petroff were at the gate to bid us good-bye. The poor colonel looked very sad and down in the mouth. He was thinking, no doubt, of Olga, for whom he gave me innumerable tender messages. As they were confided verbally, and in Russian, it is perhaps as well that I never made the acquaintance of the belle of “Beautiful Kiakhta.” She would have been somewhat confused at my interpretation of her fiancé’s messages, and might have taken his declarations of undying love and devotion for my own. As the caravan moved slowly out of the gate on the second stage of our weary journey, the guard gave us three hearty cheers, and we drank a final Vodka with Petroff, arranging to meet, if all went well, the following year in Petersburg, a place the gay, light-hearted soldier seemed far more suited to than the dreary desert-city in which we left him. Pleasing indeed was this our first experience of Russian friendship and hospitality, nor had we ever cause to alter our opinion. With all our vaunted hospitality, I doubt if even the English are not behind the Russians in these two qualities, which I have never seen so general as in Russia and Siberia.

A caravan of three hundred ox-carts laden with timber and furs passed the gates as we were leaving, going in the contrary direction to ourselves. They were bound for Dolonnor in Manchuria, a town, Petroff told us, they would be entering about the same date as we should be nearing the English Channel at Calais.

Our way lay straight through Ourga. I could not help wondering, as we passed Golgotha for the last time, and noticed the thick white steam rising from it, that the place is not one continual hotbed of cholera and typhus. Yet it is not so. The clear, dry, rarified atmosphere and hot sunshine in summer and severe frost and cold in winter do much to mitigate the unhealthy vapours and stench that constantly hang over the city. Ourga is as a matter of fact extremely healthy, and cholera is, and always has been, unknown in the capital of Mongolia.

Both our camel-drivers being Lamas, they asked permission to halt for a few minutes as we passed the Temple Gates, while a couple of rascally-looking priests came out and blessed the caravan, an operation which was witnessed with great interest by the bystanders, who abandoned their occupation of wheel-turning and came up and leisurely examined the inside of our carts, our clothes, boots, rifles, &c., with apparent interest. The ceremony of blessing us consisted in throwing a couple of gourds of arrack and some grains of millet over the leading and last camel, a proceeding that is supposed to ensure a rapid and prosperous journey. It was rather a failure in our case, for it took us exactly a week to get to Kiakhta, a voyage usually accomplished with ease in three days by the Russians at Ourga.

Three separate ranges of mountains lay between us and Kiakhta, one, the “Bain Gol” pass, so steep as to necessitate the using of bullocks to drag the huge unwieldy carts across, for the Mongolian camel has the greatest objection to pulling weights up-hill, be it ever so slight a gradient. Two broad and swift rivers, the “Kharra” and “Irul,” have also to be crossed, the former forded, the latter by ferry. Shishmaroff specially cautioned us not to attempt the passage of the Irul after dark, for the stream is dangerous owing to sunken rocks, and the ferry old and unsecure.

The going was very hard the first two days and the shaking in the carts far worse than anything we had yet experienced. To compensate us for the discomfort and fatigue, however, we passed through some of the loveliest mountain scenery I have ever seen. Game was abundant the whole way, hundreds of partridges (the sand-grouse is not met with here) and hares, with an occasional shot at a golden pheasant with which the dense forests abounded. We passed the second day a small pond or lake, alive with duck and sheldrake. Stopping the caravan for a few moments, we bagged a couple, and on the way back two couple of snipe from the marsh surrounding the water. Though we had to wade waist deep for nearly a quarter of a mile, it was worth the trouble. There must have been at least thirty duck on the pond, which was barely twenty yards wide.

We had now nothing to complain of with regard to excess of energy and activity on the part of our drivers. Our difficulty with the new Mongols was not to get them to stop, but to go on. The leader, a fat, stumpy old fellow, with eyes like an owl, slept calmly and peacefully on his camel’s back throughout the day, only to awake at the midnight halt from which hour, till we started again at six, he would devote himself to gorging, smoking innumerable pipes, and saying, or rather singing, his prayers, an operation that kept us awake the greater part of the night. I verily believe we went quite double the distance we should have done, owing to this old wretch’s sleepiness and idiotcy. Something was always going wrong. Water running short, packs falling off, the caravan filing quietly away in a direction totally different to that it should have taken, while the old fellow partook of nature’s sweet restorer, blissfully unconscious of our cries and threats. No amount of shouting would wake him——indeed, nothing short of pulling him off his camel. At such times he would look at one with an injured stare, shake himself into his seat, and go off again, only to fall asleep a few hundred yards further on, when the operation of pulling off had to be repeated. The second driver was, luckily, a bright, intelligent boy of about twenty, who saved things from going utterly to the bad. Had it not been for him, we should even now be vainly endeavouring to reach the Russo-Chinese frontier.