But among the curious customs of this people, the most singular are the ceremonies that accompany death and the disposal of the dead.
It is a great misfortune in the eyes of the Mongols to die in one’s tent: for the entry into paradise is not only closed against the defunct, but a sort of unlucky fatality surrounds, for the future, the dwelling thus contaminated by the presence of a corpse.
As soon as an inhabitant of Urga is seized with a malady considered incurable, and there is no hope of his recovery, he is carried to a chamber, called the chamber of the dying, a kind of funereal building annexed to the lamasery. When the patient is once there, he is in the hands of his priests, who, far from thinking of any remedy for his disease or of giving the least humane assistance, busy themselves merely with saving his soul.
I had the curiosity to enter this abominable hole; but I must admit, I remained there so short a time, that I can give no adequate description of it. I witnessed the lugubrious spectacle of five or six men or women, stretched on carpets on the ground, in the agony of death. But to finish as soon as possible with this gloomy subject, we will now accompany a corpse to its last resting place.
The body is wrapped in a winding sheet of blue linen, but with the face exposed, and carried to a spot about half a mile on the north-east of the town. Arrived here, it is deposited on the ground, and the mourners standing all around begin filling the air with their piercing shrieks. Hardly has this frightful uproar set in than, on looking round, some enormous dogs are seen prowling about, and while these are watching with ferocious eyes, a hoarse croaking is heard in the air, and suddenly ravens and vultures are seen hovering overhead with their sable wings outspread, trembling with impatience. But these hideous specimens of animal life, which nature seems to have strangely adapted to their horrible rôle in bestowing on them beaks and claws of blood-red, have not long to wait; for, in about ten minutes, the friends of the deceased, tired of howling, embrace one after the other the feet of the dead and then retire covering their faces. So soon as the spot is cleared nothing can equal the horror of the scene that takes place. The dogs skulk no longer, but advance snarling and growling at one another all the way, whilst the birds voraciously pounce down, filling the air with their sinister croaking. An hour after the ceremony, nothing remains of the dead but the skull and the winding sheet; but he who has been a spectator of this diabolic repast—resembling in every way that of the dream of Athalie—has been so profoundly moved, that he will not, for a long time to come, be able to purge his memory of so ghastly a spectacle.
All this side of the town is strewn with skulls and shrouds: it is almost impossible to advance without striking the foot against the one, or getting it entangled with the other. Some lying on the surface and crumbling away, are sometimes carried by the wind to a long distance; others are partially decomposed and lie confounded with the earth. When cyclones visit this district, and the wanderer has the misfortune to encounter their sweeping clouds of dust, he trembles to think what he may be breathing or grating between his teeth.
I returned to the Russian Consul’s with my mind quite troubled with what I had just seen: but I found a great distraction in the delightful evening I passed with his family, and in chatting about St. Petersburg and Paris, which my kind hosts knew very well and hoped to visit again soon. I learnt, however, this evening, some sad news: two of the three merchants forming the first caravan, of whom M. Pfaffius had spoken to me with the thought of joining me, had died; one during the journey from Kiachta to Urga, and the other shortly after having left the Mongolian capital. I went to visit the two fresh graves of those who might have been my travelling companions, and I blessed my stars that Lake Baikal had thus retarded my arrival at Kiachta.
The next morning I went to take a walk, with the young interpreter of the Consulate, over a neighbouring mountain, known by the name of the Holy Mountain. It is an object of great veneration, and cannot be ascended otherwise than on foot. It is not permitted to cultivate the smallest plot or to cut a single tree there; so that this is the sole wooded mountain amid the immense bare surface of Mongolia. The inhabitants of this dismal land often leave their homes and retire into the recesses of this wood to meditate here, weeks and even months in gloomy solitude over the vanities of the things of this world, and to enjoy the consolation procured by leading the life of an anchorite. I saw several of these hermits, established in the depths of the wood, occupied incessantly in turning their devotional wheel, and who charitably offered to intercede for us with the Koutoukta.
During my sojourn at Urga, I regretted very much my inability to pay a visit to this young divinity. He had died about six weeks before my arrival in the Mongolian capital. I was equally disappointed at not having seen the Grand Lama, who had gone into Thibet, to hunt for another little god. I was all the more sorry, inasmuch as the Russian Consul told me he could, through the Chinese Governor, have enabled me even to approach the feet of the Koutoukta. I should thus have been enabled, for a few moments, to interpellate a god on things of the other world. Such a revelation no doubt, if given to the world, would have assured a great success to this book, for the latest novelties in spirit rapping would have shrunk into insignificance by comparison.
Day after day went by, and our caravan we passed on the road, had not yet made its appearance on the horizon. A young Russian had just arrived in a carriage from Kiachta, and had seen nothing of it on the way; I began therefore to get a little uneasy, for I had confided to Pablo not only my baggage, but also my fortune. It will easily be understood that a large sum in tea bricks, the only money current in Mongolia, and also in silver pieces, with which I was obliged to provide myself for my future journey in China, constituted altogether cumbersome luggage. I should, certainly, not have acted in this way with everybody, but Pablo was quite an exceptional servant on the score of scrupulous honesty. I had not a moment’s uneasiness from a fear that he had fled with the cash: I depended, moreover, on his continual and salutary apprehensions; still, I feared that some evil had visited the caravan, or that Pablo had died, two events, after all, to me not improbable. Fortunately nothing of the sort happened; for, on the fifth day after my arrival at Urga, he presented himself in my room. He at once took my hand and, in the manner of the Turks, pressed it on his forehead, and laid down the key of my carriage like a soldier laying down his sword. Our Mongol guide asked for a day’s delay, that he might have time to sell the oxen and buy camels, required for drawing the carriages. I then had time before leaving to become acquainted with my new companions.