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The price of a camel (to hire) for a merchant across Gobi is 18 taels, for a cart- 20 taels.
Kweihuacheng to Urga. Mountains of Mongolia. Plateau and Desert Scenery. We left the inn at Kweihuacheng on the morning of the 27th June. The road is broad and is entirely level at first, but slopes gradually up as the mountains are approached, becoming at the same time more stony. It is much used by traffic. Heavy open waggons were bringing down sacks of wheat and beans, bundles of camels' hair, and goats' hair, wool and skins to the market at Kweihuacheng. The road lay between cultivation the whole way, the chief crops being wheat, millet, kaoliang and Indian corn. A little opium is to be found at each of the numerous villages scattered about the plain, but the ground is too dry for the poppy to grow successfully. This does not prevent the inhabitants of every village from being rabid opium smokers. It is indeed the exception to find anyone who is a non-smoker,
Both the soldiers whom the taotai insisted on accompanying us as far as the Mongolian frontier are smokers, as also are all the cartmen. Round cach village there are fine groves of trees; except for these the plain is bare. At noon we reached the entrance to the pass at a small village. In many respects it resembles the Naukow Pass. Hamlets of mud houses are fairly frequent but all arc Chinese, and there is no trace of Mongols, and round these hamlets are the few patches of cultivation which exist.
The security of the district is supervised by a Chinese police officer, whose duty it is to ride down the pass every day and see that all is in order. I had heard in Kweihuacheng a good deal of talk of brigands on the road, but there seems to have been little foundation for such rumours. Half way up the pass we met the officer riding down escorted by two soldiers. Two hours after entering the pass the road contracts, and leaving the torrent bed, ascends sharply to the left by a stiff climb. The summit is not reached for another hour, and from here onwards the track remains difficult for carts, as after leaving the torrent bed, the road becomes more rocky and so narrow that carts are unable to pass each other except in certain places. On the right is an almost precipitous descent into the glen. At the top of the pass there stands a large well-built cairn surrounded by numerous small obos.
Bumping up the pass one specially regrets the invasion of the Chinese and the ousting of the Mongols, for if the latter had remained in possession of the defile, the stones would have been piled into obos and a tolerable road created. From the summit of the pass a superb view can be obtained of the Kweihuacheng plain-there is no view at all to the north. The descent to the north was even more abrupt and steep than the last portion of the ascent had been, and the carts bounded from rock to rock like india- rubber balls. After ten minutes we reached a small mud village, nestling in a valley shaped very much like a basin, and traversed by a narrow rocky dry torrent bed from east to west. Into this the track turned, and for twenty-five minutes we travelled in a westerly direction, the carts every minute threatening to capsize as they leapt from rock to rock. This portion was so narrow that even camels coming up had to wait in certain places to allow the cart to pass. We then joined another narrow valley in which a small stream was trickling from north to south, carrying the drainage of the Mongolian Plateau to the Hoangho. We were in a gently-sloped funnel from which we were to emerge on to the plateau. Twenty minutes later we stopped for the night at one of the miserable hamlets of the mountains.
These hamlets exist by virtue of the Mongolian traffic, and always possess one inn at least; sometimes, indeed, all the houses are inns. As the animals are the chief beings to be considered, the inns cater for them, and provide the scantiest and most wretched accommodation for human beings. However, if this is bad, one at any rate pays accordingly, and our total bill for one night was 25 cents (5d.), 15 cents (3d.) house hire, and 10 cents for a couple of pigeons (2d.). Straw was unusually cheap, 1 cent a catty, as against 13 in Peking. The following day we continued up the same valley, this being strewn with rocks and boulders, though the hills themselves are free from them. The valley keeps about the same width (100 yards) the whole time. The stream has all flowed due south, and has dwindled to a few pools of water. Numerous mud settlements are passed along the valley, which is curious, as every year the torrent dashes down unexpectedly after heavy rains on the plateau, and whirls the unfortunate inhabitants and their dwellings away,
As we advance the hills die away to low mounds on either hand, and these in their turn disappear until four and a-half hours after starting the road emerges on to the great plateau, with no hills anywhere in sight, and nothing but gently rolling downs
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The
which stretch from here right across to near Urga. Not a tree is in sight anywhere, nor, with the exception of a small one occasionally found in a secluded hollow, will one be seen again until the wooded heights of the Bogdo Ula, south of Urga, are visible. Everywhere as far as the eye can reach in every direction a sea of green downs on which wheat is growing in abundance, the rest providing excellent pasturage for the various herds; in some places the ground is strewn with purple iris as if with a carpet. soil is a brilliant red at first, against which the bright green of the grass shows up in wonderfully effective contrast; this changes during the day to a reddish brown, and then gradually fades to a pale sandy colour. The track, composed of sand and gravel, can be seen for many miles ahead, as it wends its way into the shallow valleys and over the next wave of ground.
Each shallow valley has its own broad shallow water-course, into which the slopes drain, and it is here that are formed those avalanches of water, which prove so often disastrous to the families in the staircase leading up to the plateau. I was amazed at the rapidity with which these dry water-courses became streams and the rate with Half- which even on the plateau they were rushing along, with a roar as of cataracts. an-hour's heavy rain was sufficient to convert one of these into a river 1 feet deep, and after really heavy and prolonged rain the traveller might be delayed by one of them for a day. But while the rapidity at which the water collects is amazing, that with which it falls is no less wonderful, and rivers which were in existance at 3 P.M. had ceased to flow at 6 P.M. and the sands were dry again. While wheat, beans, and oats are the chief crops, the poppy
is also grown occasionally, but with little success, the plants I saw looked very sickly and lacked moisture. The first valley after reaching the plateau is a little deeper than those that follow. We rolled rapidly down it, and after crossing a few more ridges reached the last Chinese settlement of Kokoillikung, two hours from the edge of the plateau. This, though not a walled city, possesses a north and south gate. The town, whose population is said to be about 400, is built of mud, and the entire absence of trees increases the unattractiveness of its appearance. The shops are poor; they sell the ordinary necessities of life, but no luxuries; cheap pots, porcelain, baskets, iron implements. The most flourishing trade is probably that of the inns The inn at which we halted which are numerous and good, though supplies are scarce.
was at the same time an opium and gaming den, one of the rooms being given up to those amusements; at the same inn a room served as the registry for the "develop- ment" of the district, over which a small Chinese official, an underling of the general at Kweihuacheng, was placed. It may be said therefore that opium smoking goes on under the official eye. No proclamations have been issued forbidding it, so everyone smokes with impunity. This was probably one of the reasons for the poverty of the settlement; 150 soldiers of the old pattern are maintained here. They are commanded by quite a small officer. Nearly every shop had a caging of poles outside it, so The governor of the settlement property is probably not considered to be very secure.
Taxes
is under the police yamên at Kweihuacheng; he is not of very exalted rank, on houses are levied from Kweihuacheng. Each house pays according to its occupation, the inn at which we stayed being taxed at the rate of 25 taels a-year (31. 158.). No one comes to collect the taxes which have to be paid at Kweihuacheng, I asked if the settlement ever increased with the arrival of new colonists, but was informed that the As there are town had reached its limit and that new settlers are sent northwards. remarkably few to the north the number of immigrants must be very small indeed.
Leaving Kokoillikung by the north gate, a choice of three roads which converge at a large obo presents itself. Of these three the centre one is that which should be followed. Half-a-mile later the barracks are passed on the right. Three hours later the last Chinese settlement is reached. Between Kokoillikung and this place settle- The settlers are said to pay 3 cents ments are numerous, but poor-looking and bleak.
a mou of land (360 yards), and have no other taxes of any kind or description. The settlements are close to the road, and cultivation comes right down to this; a certain amount of virgin soil was being dug up. The last Chinese settlement, San yu yuan These are engaged in (or chang), consists of two or three shops which are also inns. the barter trade with the Mongols and ought to do a thriving business, especially as our inn-keeper informed me that the Government only levied a land tax on them and none on houses. A few soldiers are garrisoned here as a protection. They are relieved from time to time from Kokoillikung. A long day's drive of twelve hours on the morrow brought us to the first Tai of the long chain of post stations, which the Chinese Govern- ment maintain across the Gobi to the Government centres of their distant dependencies. During the whole day we only passed two settlements, both being Mongol, the first yourts we had seen. At the first station we should have abandoned our carts and taken
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