They quickly lighted a fire with camel-dung in the middle of the tent, and having set over it a caldron filled with water, they threw into it a whole sheep that had just been roughly hacked into seven portions without any method. This had hardly simmered a quarter of an hour, when the chief gave the signal to begin. With their eyes glaring with ravenous impatience, they all, like beasts of prey, rushed around the caldron, and seized each a portion, which they began tearing and devouring, without bread or salt, cracking and crunching the bones between their teeth, and bolting with painful efforts whatever impeded this savage feat of gorging. This enormous quantity of flesh, the whole sheep in fact except the large bones, was despatched with the celerity of a carcass before a pack of voracious wolves, whose feeding, rather than a human repast of the most savage race even, it so strongly resembled.
Since the Mongols have the custom of simply depositing their dead on the ground, they should, from a desire to avoid a similar treatment of the remains of animals, dispose of these otherwise, either by burial or burning. It was the latter process our guides adopted this evening, A most repulsive odour soon filled the tent and compelled us to quit it, and as there was no other retreat than our carriages, we turned into them and slept profoundly.
Our slumbers, however, were of short duration, for we were suddenly awoke by the cries of our men, who were running after one of our pack camels. This poor beast, having probably already experienced the fatigues of the passage of the Gobi, naturally desired to escape from our caravan. Having luckily shaken off, by his bounding, two little chests that were attached to his back, and which happened to belong to me, he had wandered away in the wide desert, or perhaps to the wood on the Holy Mountain, which we had skirted in our route. In short, we never saw him any more, and the accident hindered us from striking our tent this night. Our guide was obliged to go and buy another camel at Urga, and consequently we could not resume our march till ten in the morning.
On the third day we arrived at the foot of a chain of mountains that formed the limits on this side of the desert proper. As the laden camels cannot ascend any hill, our guide hired oxen of the Mongols, who are established on this side of the range to let them for this purpose. It took us four hours to reach the summit, and when I had got so far, I turned to the north to contemplate, for the last time, the magnificent Altái mountains, whose crests covered with snow now shut out Siberia from my eyes; and I bid adieu for ever to its wintry scenes. In this glance I could trace the whole of the wrong route I had just followed, and when I turned to the south, where not a flake of snow was visible, my thoughts brightened with the prospect of spring over the verdant plains of China, which I hoped soon to reach.
We at last entered the great Desert of Gobi, and began a journey which happened to be of eighteen days’ duration across this dreary waste.
We stopped but very little on the way, and I wondered how camels, animals that appear so lank and so loose in their framework, could support so much fatigue. We pitched our tents about eleven in the morning, and, while stationary for about two hours, our camels pastured on some sparse grass. When we started the caravan did not stop again till eleven at night.
The night halt, during which the camels slept, did not last more than an hour, and then we went on again without stopping till eleven in the morning.
The centre of the Desert of Gobi resembles the Sahara. It is a sea of sand, over the whole extent of which there is no object whatever to arrest the eye. When a little later we got further into it, and during the four days which it took us to cross the part wholly void of vegetation, our camels accomplished their work as usual without taking the least nourishment. The last day only, several of them stopped and began to lie down, as if to make us understand their extreme fatigue. A few blows with the stick soon set them up on their legs again and, in the end, not one dropped altogether. The horse that our guide had bought at Kiachta, and whose forage of hay and oats was borne by the camels, died at the end of a week, and another, we had bought of the Mongols we met accidentally on our way, shared the same fate. We had here a striking proof, under our eyes, of the superiority of the camel over the horse in supporting prolonged fatigue.
The Mongol leader of our caravan had a thorough knowledge of the desert. During the day he followed, generally, the still visible traces of caravans; skeletons of camels, horses, or sometimes of oxen, which we saw scattered here and there. At night, he kept his eye on a star, as the mariner does on a distant pharos, and marched straight towards it without looking at the ground, like the Magi of the Gospel. Sometimes, however, the sky was covered with clouds and the ground presented no traces of former passages; but these accidents in no way embarrassed him, he continued guiding our caravan towards Kalkann with the calm assurance of a navigator steering his ship towards some port still beyond the reach of vision.
At one night halt, four days after leaving Urga, M. Schévélof reminded us that the next day the orthodox church would celebrate the feast of Easter: “We must,” he said, “on this occasion, give ourselves up to some enjoyment.” The project was cheerfully adopted. M. Marine ran out and soon brought in some bonbons, which he distributed to begin with; and then I said, “I will provide some delicacy for supper,” and hastening to my carriage, I quickly selected and brought in a tureen of foie gras, a stock of which I had laid in. M. Schévélof opened a bottle of Crimean wine, and we sat down to a jolly repast.