The procession of twenty-five or thirty dishes, composing the governor of Maimatchin’s dinner, commenced, according to Chinese habits, with the meats, continued with the soups and sweets, and ended with a plate of plain boiled rice, which is invariably presented to the guests at the end of the repast, no one, however, touching it, and apparently having no other meaning than this: “I have now offered you everything I have in my house, and, to continue the hospitality, I have no other resource than to place before you the most ordinary article of diet.”
The day for the departure of the caravan was now approaching, and I began to busy myself with my preparations for crossing the Desert of Gobi.
The tea merchants, with whom I was to travel through Mongolia and north China, undertook to furnish us with conveyances, and to arrange with a Mongolian guide to take us as far as the Great Wall.
This journey is undertaken in little Chinese vehicles, kinds of boxes resting on a pair of wheels behind, and supported in front by a draught camel between two long shafts; the box being of sufficient size to permit the occupant to lie down. The vehicle can contain but one traveller; and the camel, which has to bear considerable fatigue—as the reader will subsequently learn—cannot ascend any hill. These animals, therefore, are not employed in the first part of the route in Mongolia, between Kiachta and Urga, because it is necessary to traverse a steep road along a chain of mountains. During this first period, these little vehicles are drawn by oxen. The tedious slowness of their movements, and, besides, the desire I had to precede the caravan to Urga, that I might stay there a little while, induced me not to join my companions from Kiachta, but to proceed as far as Urga in a tarantass. I accordingly left Pablo and my baggage to come by the slow caravan, and I offered a place in my Russian vehicle to M. Marine, one of the tea merchants who was to cross, with me, the Desert of Gobi.
It is astonishing what a heap of objects are necessary when the traveller is going to wander, more than a month, in the desert, far from the aid of his fellow-creatures. He has to think, not only of the necessary provisions, but of an assortment of tools for repairing the vehicles; preventives and remedies for man and beast against possible accidents of the way; presents, indispensable to making friends among the wandering tribes; and, especially, the strange money current among the Mongols, a stock of which is requisite.
These Orientals despise gold and silver, and their business is carried on exclusively by barter. A tea of ordinary quality, called brick tea, on account of the form given to it by compression, is the article of food the most appreciated, and the most common substitute for money. One of these bricks would represent about eight or ten shillings.
Needles ready threaded, sugar and brandy, have also an important exchangeable value. I was obliged to furnish myself with many objects at a village neighbouring to Kiachta, at Triosky-Sawsk, where I had an opportunity of visiting the rare collections of M. Popoff.
This savant has studied the habits of all the insects of Trans-Baikalia. I noticed, among the lepidoptera, a butterfly of an extremely rare kind, which he calls Liparis Ochropoda, and which lays productive eggs without the aid of the male. This fact is attested by some very curious experiments, confirmed by him by repetition, at the gymnasium of Irkutsk, and at Triosky-Sawsk, with complete success. He has seen these produced for three generations successively without access to the male, the last of these being composed entirely of males.[26]
Our tarantass, containing M. Marine and myself, left Kiachta three days after the departure of the caravan.