the Lama City is the tent
market, and just beyond it are the blacksmith shops where bridles,
cooking pots, tent pegs, and all the equipment essential to a
wandering life on the desert can be purchased in an hour--if you
have the price! Nothing is cheap in Urga, with the exception of
horses, and when we began to outfit for our trip on the plains we
received a shock similar to that which I had a month ago in New
York, when' paid twenty dollars for a pair of shoes. We ought to be
hardened to it now, but when we were being robbed in Urga by
profiteering Chinese, who sell flour at ten and twelve dollars a
sack and condensed milk at seventy-five cents a tin, we roared and
grumbled--and paid the price! I vowed I would never pay twenty
dollars for a pair of shoes at home, but roaring and grumbling is no
more effective in procuring shoes in New York than it was in
obtaining flour and milk in Urga.

We paid in Russian rubles, then worth three cents each. (In former
years a ruble equaled more than half a dollar.) Eggs were well-nigh
nonexistent, except those which had made their way up from China
over the long caravan trail and were guaranteed to be "addled"--or
whatever it is that sometimes makes an egg an unpleasant companion
at the breakfast table. Even those cost three rubles each! Only a
few Russians own chickens in Urga and their productions are
well-nigh "golden eggs," for grain is very scarce and it takes an
astounding number of rubles to buy a bushel.

Fortunately we had sent most of our supplies and equipment to Urga
by caravan during the winter, but there were a good many odds and
ends needed to fill our last requirements, and we came to know the
ins and outs of the sacred city intimately before we were ready to
leave for the plains. The Chinese shops were our real help, for in
Urga, as everywhere else in the Orient, the Chinese are the most
successful merchants. Some firms have accumulated considerable
wealth and the Chinaman does not hesitate to exact the last cent of
profit when trading with the Mongols.

At the eastern end of Urga's central street, which is made
picturesque by gayly painted prayer wheels and alive with a moving
throng of brilliant horsemen, are the Custom House and the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. The former is at the far end of an enormous
compound filled with camel caravans or loaded carts. There is a more
or less useless wooden building, but the business is conducted in a
large _yurt_, hard