From Pekin to Calais by Land

by Harry De Windt

I do not think we got more than twelve hours’ sleep in all during the journey from Ourga to Kiakhta, and this was the greatest discomfort with which one had to contend. Even when, after an uninterrupted spell of hard work for twelve hours, the caravan halted at midnight till daybreak, sleep was often impossible from the very knowledge that in five hours’ at most one would have to be on the tramp again. Besides the hammering in of tent-pegs, chopping of firewood, and last, but not least, the semi-musical prayers of our somnolent driver often lasted till four or half past, and put sleep out of the question. A Mongol is never so wakeful and active as at night, and if he is musically inclined, always indulges this propensity in the darkness, when all right-minded people are courting the drowsy god. Expostulating was useless, as any one who has ever been brought in contact with this strange race will understand.

We were now a good deal bothered by mosquitoes and sandflies, an annoyance from which we had been free throughout Northern China, and the desert proper. Now, however, these pests attacked us night and day in myriads, and we suffered a good deal from their bites, which were unusually severe and poisonous.

Our younger camel-driver carried a very original prayer-wheel, a sort of miniature windmill let into the butt-end of his thick, heavy whip. When set going and held against the wind, this ingenious contrivance would spin away without cessation for hours together. He was a devout youth, and it was a long time before I could induce him to part with it, but love of filthy lucre finally overcame religious scruples, and I managed to buy it of him on arrival at Kiakhta for a couple of roubles, under the strictest injunctions not to tell the “Old Sheep,” as he irreverently termed the sleepy Lama.

We reached the banks of the Kharra at nine o’clock on the morning of the 6th of August. This river is a tributary of the Khon River, which has its source near the Kara Korum Mountains in central Mongolia, and after winding its course of nearly 700 miles, flows into the great inland sea of Lake Baikal, after watering the towns of Kiakhta and Selenginsk, where, however, it is not navigable. There was no ferry, but we managed to ford it pretty easily. The weather had been dry, and the stream, which in time of flood is rapid and very dangerous, was never above our girths the whole way across. The water was beautifully clear, with a shingly bed, and we took the opportunity of filling the water-casks, not without a good deal of opposition from the Mongols, notwithstanding that the water had been filthy ever since leaving Ourga. This extraordinary people seem to prefer drinking out of a stagnant pool or well, in which a dead sheep or camel has been soaking for days, to filling the casks out of a pure running stream. On the banks of the river were three dirty, dilapidated yourts, empty, the first signs of a habitation we had seen since leaving Ourga.

Lovely weather had favoured us till now; bright hot sunshine tempered with a cool fresh breeze. But it was too good to last. About four o’clock to-day, the bright blue sky became overcast, and half an hour later, down came the rain, and continued steadily, and without cessation, till 2 a.m. The roofs of our carts, warped and cracked by the heat of the sun, leaked like sieves. But the weather, rough as it was, did not in the least affect my driver’s somnolent propensities. I was awoke that night, about eleven, out of a fitful doze, by a crash, to find that we were crossing a steep, precipitous range of hills, and that my cart was balancing itself on one wheel, on the edge of a precipice, the bottom of which was invisible. I could pretty well gauge the height, though, by the sound of a torrent dashing and foaming over some rocks at least a hundred feet below. I was only just in time to catch hold of his nose-string, and wrench the camel back into safety. In another moment the whole caravan would have toppled over. It was the old story. The Lama had been asleep. This last straw was too much, and in a fit of ungovernable temper, I pulled the old wretch off his camel, and sent him sprawling on his back on the stony pathway. But he took it perfectly coolly, merely picking himself up without a word, and with the usual stolid stare of mingled surprise and annoyance, calmly proceeded to clamber up again. Five minutes more and he was as sound asleep as ever. What could one do with such a creature, but give it up in despair! I took the precaution, however, though it still poured with rain, of walking till daylight.

A bright sunny morning made up for the discomforts of the night, and we were able, while fires were being lit and tea prepared, to dry our clothes and mattresses in the sun, which as early as eight o’clock was too warm to be pleasant. The scenery throughout the day resembled one enormous deer-park. Grassy slopes, as smooth as a billiard-table, and every now and again large clumps of fir-trees, which grew so regularly, they looked as if art and not nature had placed them there; while on the horizon, green, undulating hills, covered with forests of dark pine-trees, cut the bright blue sky-line. The track occasionally led past clear broad sheets of water teeming with fish, occasionally through belts of copse-wood, of silver birch and hazel, the ground one blaze of hyacinths, wild roses, and pinks growing in the thick rich grass, with clear, narrow brooklets running here and there through the thick undergrowth. We saw a brace of pheasants in one of these woods, but too far off to get a shot. About mid-day we halted for dinner under a clump of fir-trees. The cattle grazing in the sunshine, the quiet stillness of the place, broken only by the droning of insects, and voices of children playing near some distant yourt, was intensely refreshing after our night of misery. What would not these hundreds of miles of splendid pasture be worth at home? No wonder the Mongols are a contented race with such land as this, and no rent to pay!

Four o’clock the following morning saw us at the foot of the mountain, to cross which we were to abandon the camels and take to oxen. Sylvia was despatched in quest of the latter, but did not return with them till nearly three o’clock the following afternoon. We thus had a delay of nearly twenty-four hours, but were not altogether sorry, for the shaking and jolting of the past two days made one glad of a rest. We encamped close to a limestone mountain, about five hundred feet high, from the summit of which a huge piece of rock, quite a hundred feet in height, had become detached, and crumbling away as clean as if cut with a knife, had fallen on to the caravan-track immediately below. It was six o’clock by the time we had got the bullocks in and commenced the ascent of the pass, which, gradual at first, became very difficult long before we reached the summit. One bullock was harnessed to the shafts, the other to the axle of the wheel, but so severe was the strain the ropes continually broke on the way up. The cart and pack camels were in readiness to take us on when we reached the other side. Though a distance of only five miles from where we encamped, they took nearly eight hours to do the journey.

The way lay at first through a narrow ravine thickly grown with pine and silver birch. Through the centre ran a clear running brook, plashing over limestone rocks and boulders, and almost hidden by ferns and wild flowers. Above us towered the almost perpendicular wall of rock that must be conquered before nightfall, if we wished to avoid camping out all night on some rocky ledge——not a pleasing prospect——for it was already bitterly cold out of the rays of the sun. I noticed here, growing in great luxuriance, a bright yellow poppy——a colour in which I had always imagined that flower was unknown. This part of the mountain also swarmed with enormous hares. We must have seen some thirty or forty, and could easily have bagged half a dozen, but Moses would not hear of it, or of our delaying the caravan for a moment to get out our guns. As the ascent was getting harder every moment, we did not argue the matter.

I think that was quite the worst bit of mountain work we did the whole journey. Every moment I thought the bullocks would give in, or the carts go to pieces. The boulders they had to get over, holes and watercourses to get out of, would have seemed incredible to any one unacquainted with Mongolian travel. On foot it was bad enough, and we were glad we had sent on the ponies, for it would have been impossible to climb and lead them as well. Every ten minutes or so a halt was made for a quarter of an hour. Thus we toiled on, till half-past eight o’clock, when we found ourselves on the summit, after four hours of as hard, physical work as I ever experienced.

The moon had now risen, which made the view from the summit very picturesque. Round us on every side stretched away chains of lofty mountains, their limestone peaks gleaming white in the moonlight, while a grey, flaky mist half hid the deep gorges of pine and fir-trees at our feet. A bright light shining out of the darkness in the distance showed where our camels awaited us on the plain——twelve hundred feet below. We rested for an hour, to give the bullocks breathing-time, and then commenced the descent. It was a weird scene. A Chinese lantern just sufficed to make darkness visible, and show that we had halted by the side of a huge cairn, about twenty feet high, formed of stones, bits of stick, mutton bones, and strewn here and there with bits of red, yellow, and white cloth covered with Tibetan and Mongol characters. As we left the spot, our Mongols, unable to find a stone, each picked up a branch of fir, and placed it reverently on the heap. These are looked on as offerings to the “God of travellers,” who protects the faithful from peril while on a journey. We reached the camels again at ten o’clock. One tael did not seem exorbitant for the hiring of six bullocks, and the services of three extra Mongols, for that was the sum Jee Boo told me he paid them, and they seemed quite satisfied. Probably the greater part of that found its way into our trusty interpreter’s pockets.