Part 12

Some have explained the exclusion law which controls the situation by the self-sufficiency of the Chinese, who wished no real settlement of their people here,--the fruit of a pride deep-rooted as that underlying the custom which brings every corpse back to China for burial. Others, by the desire to avoid transmitting to the Empire the diseases that are rife in Mongolia. Whatever the basis, the regulation is in full force to-day. At one time merchants in Maimachen kept their wives across the border in Russia, which under a subterfuge was not technically forbidden. But the ability to hide behind a technicality is a blessing enjoyed especially in democracies. It did not go with the chief of police, who came down for a squeeze which made it more profitable to pay the women’s fare home than to continue to offend.

[Illustration: A WAYSIDE TEMPLE]

Associating with the native Mongol women is here precluded by the fact that there are no settlements near by from which the Chinese might get indigenous consolation. A deserted tract lies behind the town. Only camel-drivers, wood-cutters, and sellers of cattle come into Maimachen, and they leave at night. For though the Mongols, in their pointed hats, pass along the streets, none may lawfully live within the stockaded walls, and none keep shop beneath the carved eaves of the houses which flank its narrow streets. This is the prerogative of Chinese traders from beyond the far-off Wall.

The spectacled merchant Tu-Shiti, who has become prosperous from the sale of Mongol wool, retakes for a visit, every two years, the long camel-trail to Kalgan and China. The tea-trader, Chantu-fou, drinks his wares alone. The slant-eyed clerks and booth-keepers trotting down the streets in their skull-caps, hands tucked up the sleeves of their blue jackets, plan no theatre-parties or amity balls, or sleigh-rides in the biting air, as over the way in Kiahta. The seller of sweetmeats will never be told to be sure and inclose the red and black New Year’s card. There is no red-cheeked Chinese boy to smile as he munches your sugar; to puzzle over your ticking watch as at Kotoi, or to tease the tame crane in the courtyard. Not a girl appears on the narrow streets. It is the sentence passed upon the generations of Chinese who have gone to Mongolia, that no woman of their race shall pass the Wall. And so it must remain, for never a home will be founded till China, the unchanging, shall change.

Back and forth through the thoroughfares go the little men with the queues flapping against their backs and their sallow uncommunicative faces. Are they thinking of the time when they will have made their little fortunes and can get back to China to enjoy them? As they wait for customers in the little booths, do they plan the homes which none of their blood may ever possess in Mongolia? When they sleep on their wooden platforms, do they dream of faces in the Kingdom of the Sun? Never will one know. Around the thoughts of the Chinaman arise the ramparts of his isolation. What he believes, what he hopes, what he dreams are not for you. The soul of China is behind the Wall.

The tarantass rolls out of the quaint weather-worn gateway of the woman-less city of Maimachen. “How much they miss!” says André, filling his pipe from the new pouch. “How much they escape!” retorts Alexsimevich.

When in hot haste Pharaoh ordered out his great war-chariot to pursue the rebellious Children of Israel, and thundered through his pyloned gateway with plunging horses urged by the shouts of his Nubian charioteers, he must have experienced, despite contrasts, much the same physical sensations as those which we feel when the tarantass starts in full gallop across the level plain to the distant range of mountains; but where Pharaoh’s robe was white with dust, ours is white with snow, and the sun, which baked his road, makes ours endurable.

The horses leap free under the knotted lash of the Siberian driver. With the rumble of low thunder the ponderous wooden wheels bound over the rutty road, hurling the springless tarantass into the air and from side to side. You brace yourself with baggage and hold to the sides, but toss despite all, like corn in a popper. The hay on which you sit shifts away to one side, leaving the bare boards to rub through clothes and packs. A sudden splinter makes you jump like a startled deer beside the way. In this noisy tarantass, down the narrow road grooved with the ruts of the Mongol carts and sledges that have gone northward, you tumble and groan and bump and roll out across the open country.

There is a wide plain from Maimachen. It climbs into the first barrier-range and the forest belt of Mongolia, whose plateau is the third terrace in the rise of land from the low frozen flats of the Northern Lena to the Roof of the World,--the Himalayas of the south. The northern city of Yakutsk is at a very low elevation, only a few feet above the sea. Irkutsk on the fifty-second parallel is 1521 feet in altitude, Troitzkosavsk on the fifty-first is 2600, Urga on the forty-eighth 3770, Lhassa 11,000 feet.

Far to the northwest, Mongolia is a forested fur region; far to the south is Shama--the desert. Here at the north and east the forested belt of the Siberian highlands south of Baikal breaks off almost at the boundary.

Snow is over everything, but thinly. It has been worn away on the road, leaving brown patches over which the tarantass, mounting the long slope with horses at a slow trot, lugubriously thuds. A long stretch of straggly trees and stumps tells of Kiahta peasants going over the border to cut wood where no timber-laws limit. Up and up we go, the way steeper every _sagene_,--afoot now and the horses leaning and pulling at the traces. Finally silhouetted against the sky appears a rough pile of stones. At its top bannerets are waving from drooping poles. It is the Borisan on the summit of the pass to which every pious Mongol adds an offering, until the pile is many feet high, with stones, sticks, pieces of bread and bones. Some throw money which no one save a Chinaman will commit the sacrilege of touching; some give a Moscow paper-wrapped sweetmeat, some a child’s worn hat or yellow-printed prayer-cloths waving on their sticks and fading in the wind;--everything is holy that is given to the gods.

A piercing wind, searching and paralyzing, meets the tarantass beyond the crest at the southern border of the forest: it is Gobi’s compliments to Baikal, the salute of the great desert to the great lake. The horses stumble through the drifted snow, scarcely able to walk. The driver, blinded, half-frozen, keeps to the general direction of the obliterated trail. Barely one verst an hour is made, until, under the shelter of the bald white range of hills, the road reappears and the wind is warded off.

A rolling plain between the heights is the next stretch of the way. The afternoon sun, dimly bright, creeps haloed through the lightly falling snow. Deep in the mist appears a dark moving mass. It grows, focuses, and takes shape into a shaggy beast of burden, and camel after camel emerges from the haze, loaded with square bales of tea.

“Ask if there is shelter near,” you shout to the muffled head of the interpreter.

“I will ask,” he replies. Then to the caravan leader: “_Sein oh!_” he cries in greeting.

The foremost camel stares stonily as its Mongol driver twitches the piece of wood which pierces its upper lip, and the whole train stops.

“_Gir orhum beine?_”

“_Ti, ti, orhum beine!_” comes the answer. “It is close at hand.”

Forward the caravan slowly paces, each camel turning his head to stare as he passes out into the mist again. One of them has left a fleck of blood in each print of his broad spongy foot which the driver will cobble with leather at the next halt. Along their trail you drive southward. The mist is clearing as you rise, and the sun shines down on the snow which has crystalized in little shafts an inch high. These spear-shaped slivers have a brightness and a sheen of extraordinary brilliance, and like prisms show all the colors of the rainbow. They cast a gleam, as might a mirror, a hundred yards away. It is as if upon the great white mantle had been thrown haphazard treasuries in rubies and emeralds and diamonds and opals,--myriad evergrowing rivals of Dresden regalias. The sun goes down with its necromancy. Beyond, the soft blanket enfolds the rolling hills. It drapes the rocks and weaves its drooping festoons about the barren mountain-sides.

“Mongol _yurta_!” calls André, turning to point out with his whip the low dome-shaped hut, black against the darkening sky. On its unknown occupants we are to billet ourselves, sheltered by the rule of nomad hospitality. As the tarantass nears the wattled corral, the watchful ravens stir from their perches. The picketed camels turn to stare. A gaunt black hound stalks out, with mane erect and ominous growls.

“_Nohoi_,” cries out Alexsimevich, to the inhabitants of the hut; then adds to you, “Very bad dogs! It is a Mongol proverb: ‘If you are near a dog, you are near a bite.’”

Beneath an osier-built lean-to a woman is milking a sheep, with a lamb to encourage the flow. She calls a guttural order to the dog, which slinks back. Then she comes to the wattled fence, while the sheep which has been getting milked escapes to a far corner of the yard. The woman’s head is curiously framed by a triangular red hat, and silver hair-plates, which hold out like wings her black tresses. The shoulders of her magenta dress are padded up into epaulettes two inches high. She is girded with a sash.

“_Sein oh!_” says Alexsimevich.

“_Sein!_” she answers, and opens the gateway to the enclosure around the hut.

André drives in among the sheep and cows, and you climb lumberingly down with cold stiffened limbs. André puts his whip upon the felt roof, for it is a deadly breach of etiquette to bring it into the house.

“You go in,” said Alexsimevich.

It is like entering a kennel, this struggle through the narrow aperture, muffled to the eyes in double furs and awkward felt boots. As you straighten up after the crawl through the entrance, a red glare from the fire just in front meets the gaze. Stinging smoke grips the throat; you choke in pain. It blinds the smarting eyes. You gasp and stagger. Then some one takes your hand and pulls you violently down on a low couch to the left, where in course of time breath and sight return. There is no chimney, nor stack for the fire of the brazier, which stands in the centre of the hut. One can see the open sky through the three-foot hole above. The smoke, finding its way toward this aperture, works along the sloping wooden poles which form the framework of the felt-covered tent, filling the whole upper section with its blinding fumes. To stand is to smother. Sitting, the head comes below the smoke-line.

With recovered vision, one can look around within the hut. The couch of refuge, raised some six inches above the floor, is the bed by night, the sitting-place by day. Against the wall at the left hand, and directly opposite the door, is a box-like cupboard, along whose top are ranged pictures of grotesque Buddhist gods, before whom are little brass cups full of offerings, millet or oil, in which is standing a burning wick. Beside the door is a shelf loaded with fire-blackened pots and kettles. Branches of birch for fuel are thrown beneath. On the far side of the room, three black lambs, fenced off by a wicker barricade, are huddled together, quietly sleeping.

[Illustration: A MONGOL BELLE AND HER YURTA]

[Illustration: A ZABAIKALSKAIA BURIAT]

Seated beside the fire close by is the girl of nineteen who has just saved you from asphyxiation. The long fur-lined working-dress, common to all ages and sexes of Mongols, is buttoned on her left side with bright brass buttons, and is belted in with a sash. She has not the padded shoulder-humps, nor the spreading hair arrangement, which gave to her mother, who welcomed us, so weird an appearance. Her complexion is swarthy like an Indian’s, not the Chinese chalky yellow, and she has red cheeks and full red lips. Her eyes are large and black. The rest of the party have stayed a moment outside to ask about hay and water. You have made this solitary and awkward entrance. The girl has no more notion than a bird who the strange man of another nation may be, who has stumbled into her home. But it does not trouble her in the least. For a moment she looks you over calmly, with a smile of amused curiosity, rolling and wringing with her fingers a lambskin which she is softening. Then composedly she bids you the Mongol welcome, “_Sein oh!_” and holds out her hand. Her grip is as firm and frank as a Siberian’s.

Now Alexsimevich comes tumbling through the door, and next André. Both are used to these huts, and artistically stoop below the smoke-line. All our impedimenta--blankets, furs, pots, kettles, bread-bag, rifles--are heaped in a mound within the space between the couch and the tethered lambs. The girl has not stirred from her work.

“They are friends of yours then, Alexsimevich?” you ask.

“No, no, I never saw them,” he answers. “Any one may take shelter in any _yurta_ in Mongolia.”

A small head suddenly makes its appearance from the pile of rugs on the sofa opposite on the women’s side of the tent. There emerges, naked save for a bronze square-holed Chinese _cash_ fastened around her neck, a little slant-eyed three-year-old. The water in the small cups offered to the _dokchits_ has long been ice, and one has full need of one’s inner fur coat and cap in the hut, where the entrance, opening with every visitor, sends a draft of air, forty degrees below zero, through from the door to the open hole which serves as chimney. And still this tot can step out naked and not even seem to feel it.

“The child’s name?” asks Alexsimevich.

“Turunga,” replies the girl.

“And your own?”

“Sibilina,” she says, and smiles.

Turunga carefully inspects you, and solemnly accepts a lump of sugar which she knows what to do with, even if it is a rare luxury offered to gods. She sits down, in an evidently accustomed spot on the warm felt before the brazier, to play with the scissors-like fire-tongs, carefully putting back the red coals that have fallen out on the earthen platform.

The tarantass-driver, having piled up your impedimenta, excavates from its midst the bag of rye-bread, which he sets to thaw. He gets next the little bag of _pelmenes_, the meat-balls covered with dough-paste which you carry frozen hard. The mother comes in from under the _yurta’s_ flap, and, placing a blackened basin over the brazier, puts into it a little water and scours diligently with a bundle of birch-twigs. She brushes out this water on the earthen floor near the entrance. This is the picketed lamb’s especial territory, to which the felt rugs before the couches and the altar do not extend. A big bag of snow which she has brought from outside is opened and the chunks are piled into the basin, where, while one watches, it melts down into water.

“_Boutzela! boutzela!_” she cries soon, holding a lighted sliver over the basin to see by: “it boils.” Into the Mongol’s pot go our _pelmenes_, to brew for a few moments. An accidentally trenchant description of Siberian _pelmenes_ was given on the quaintly-worded French bill of fare in the hotel at Irkutsk: “Meat hashed in bullets of dough.” They come out, however, a combination of hot soup and dumplings, very welcome after the long cold day’s drive across the plains, the frozen marsh, and the rolling hills. The wooden Chinese bowls from the bazaar at Troitzkosavsk are filled now with our hostess’s big ladle, and the application of warmth inwardly gradually thaws the outlying regions of the body.

But there is trouble in camp. Turunga is moved by the peculiar passions of her sex and her age, curiosity and hunger. It does not matter in the least that she has home-made _pelmenes_ every two or three days--she wants these particular meat-balls. The little mouth begins to pucker and the eyes to screw up. No amount of knee-riding by the mother takes the place of the _pelmenes_. We fill a heaping ladleful and André furnishes his own bowl. The mother receives it, holding out both her hands cup-fashion as is the etiquette, and Turunga is satisfied.

The mother looks kindly to the stranger and smiles at André, then throws more sticks of the precious firewood on the embers. André has caught, likewise, the not unadmiring glance of the young maid. The girl who waits in Troitzkosavsk is not the only one who appreciates our six-foot Siberian hunter.

The dog barks in the yard, but without the menace which hailed us, and the crunch of a horse’s hoofs sounds on the frozen ground outside. The flap opens, with its inrush of freezing air. Stooping, there enters a typical Mongol, squat of figure, round of head, with broad sunbrowned face and a short queue of black hair. He wears a funnel-shaped hat, magenta-colored, and is enveloped in a long _shuba_, with brass buttons down one side like a fencer’s jacket. About his waist is a sash with jingling knives and pouches. He is the head of the family, come in from herding his horses. He turns back the long fur-lined cuffs which have protected his gloveless hands, and stretches out both his arms for you to place your hands over his. It is the man’s ceremony of welcome. Then he produces a little porcelain snuff-bottle. This must be received in the palm of the right hand with a bow. It is to be utilized, and passed back. If the herder is out of snuff, the bottle is offered just the same and you must appreciatively pretend to take a pinch. Such is etiquette.

The soup is gone now; the pot, cleaned out for the tea, is again on the boil and the leaves are thrown in. André has borrowed a hatchet from his host, and has chopped off a piece of milk, which goes in as well.

It is in order to ask the new arrival, Subadar Jay, to pass his wooden cup for some of the beverage. He takes it and the lumps of sugar without a word of thanks. The Mongol language has no expression to signify gratitude. Silence does not, however, mean that he does not appreciate. The dozen pieces of Mongol sandal-sole bread which he gives you later are worth two bricks of tea in open market, and this current medium of exchange--caravan-brought tea--is worth sixty kopecks the brick. No small gift, this bread, to an interloping stranger who is brewing tea by his fire, and camping unasked on his bed. A Tibet-schooled lama knows the Buddhist maxim, “Only accomplish good deed, ask no reward.” But the unlettered Mongol layman knows its practice.

Little Turunga has played naked before the fire long enough now; she is caught up; her reluctant feet are put into the boots with pointed upturned toes, and her body into a miniature sheepskin “daily,” such as her mother and father wear. The little girl is as smiling and shy and coquettish as any child of white skin and complex clothes.

“Will you sell Turunga for a brick of tea?”

“No, no,” says the mother, gathering the little one quickly up into her arms, while the rest of the family smile at the offer and her solicitude. “No, no, not even for ten bricks!”

Everybody laughs, Turunga with the rest, in a child’s instinctive knowledge that she is the centre of admiring attraction.

Far more petting than the Russian babies get is lavished on the little Mongols. Perhaps the much smaller families (only two or three children to a hut) allow more attention per capita. The mother hands Turunga over to her father,--unheard-of in Siberia,--and he plays with the child, giving her pieces of sheep’s tail to eat from his mouth, answering her prattle or baby-talk and endless questions. At night, about eight o’clock, the mother takes the child to the couch and they both go to sleep, Turunga cuddled warmly under her mother’s _shuba_.

Meanwhile we men sit cross-legged by the fire and talk of many things,--of the pasturage for the sheep, of the snow on the road, of the beauty of the housewife’s silver headplates, of water and roads, of whether or not the Mongol _dokchits_ on the altar are like the Gobi wolves that hate Chinese.

It is interesting to note how some of the words used (few, however) have a familiar sound--although there is said to be no common ancestry with the Indo-Germanic tongues; perhaps it is only the instinctive sound-imitation which makes the Mongol baby cry “Mama” to its mother, as does the child in Chita and in Chicago. “Mine,” for instance, is _mina_; “thine” is _tenei_. A horse or mare is _mari_. The word for “it is,” “they are,” is _beine_, a fairly respectable form of the verb “to be” in Chaucer’s English.

The grammar is delightfully simple. In the vernacular there is no bothering about singular or plural. “One hut” is _niger gir_; “two huts,” _hayur gir_. “Milk” is _su_, and apparently the word for “water” was formed from it--_ou su_. If one wants to know whether it is time to throw in the meat-balls he says, “_Ou su boutzela?_” with a rising inflection (“Water boils?”) and the answer is, “_Boutzela_.” The “moon” and a “month” are _sara_, and the years go in cycles of twelve. If one wants to compliment the host on the excellence of the sandal-shaped bread which he hands out, loaded with gray chalky cheese (_hourut_), one says, “Bread good be” (_Boba sein beine_); this gives him great pleasure.

Some of the written numbers are somewhat like ours: 2 and 3 are nearly the same, but they have fallen forward on their faces; 6 has an extra tail. When the teapot overturns, they say “_Harlab!_” to relieve their feelings. There is no word for “so good,” “farewell,” or “much obliged.” These are just squeezed into the heartiness of the final “good” (_sein_). So when one leaves, he holds out both arms, palms up, for the host to put his own upon, and says loudly, “_Sein oh!_”

A not unbarren amusement is to study out one’s own derivations for some much-explained words. _Tamerlane_ is often given as meaning “the lame.” Why does it not rather come from _temur_ (iron) and mean “man of iron,” as the ruler of the Khalka tribe was called Altan Khan, the golden king? The Amur River has _khara-muren_ (black water) usually given as its derivative root. Why not the Mongol word _amur_, which means simply “quiet”?