everal hundred
feet of "movie" film at the monastery, we ran on northward over a
road which was as smooth and hard as a billiard table. The Turin
plain was alive with game; marmots, antelope, hares, bustards,
geese, and cranes seemed to have concentrated there as though in a
vast zoological garden, and we had some splendid shooting. But as
Yvette and I spent two glorious months on this same plain, I will
tell in future chapters how, in long morning horseback rides and
during silent starlit nights, we learned to know and love it.

CHAPTER VI

THE SACRED CITY OF THE LIVING BUDDHA

Far up in northern Mongolia, where the forests stretch in an
unbroken line to the Siberian frontier, lies Urga, the Sacred City
of the Living Buddha. The world has other sacred cities, but none
like this. It is a relic of medieval times overlaid with a veneer of
twentieth-century civilization; a city of violent contrasts and
glaring anachronisms. Motor cars pass camel caravans fresh from the
vast, lone spaces of the Gobi Desert; holy lamas, in robes of
flaming red or brilliant yellow, walk side by side with black-gowned
priests; and swarthy Mongol women, in the fantastic headdress of
their race, stare wonderingly at the latest fashions of their
Russian sisters.

We came to Urga from the south. All day we had been riding over
rolling, treeless uplands, and late in the afternoon we had halted
on the summit of a hill overlooking the Tola River valley. Fifteen
miles away lay Urga, asleep in the darkening shadow of the Bogdo-ol
(God's Mountain). An hour later the road led us to our first
surprise in Mai-ma-cheng, the Chinese quarter of the city. Years of
wandering in the strange corners of the world had left us totally
unprepared for what we saw. It seemed that here in Mongolia we had
discovered an American frontier outpost of the Indian fighting days.
Every house and shop was protected by high stockades of unpeeled
timbers, and there was hardly a trace of Oriental architecture save
where a temple roof gleamed above the palisades.

Before we were able to adjust our mental perspective we had passed
from colonial America into a hamlet of modern Russia. Gayly painted
cottages lined the road, and, unconsciously, I looked for a white
church with gilded cupolas. The church was not in sight, but its
place was taken by a huge red building of surpassing ugliness, the
Russian Consulate. It stands alone on the summit of a knoll, the
open plains stre