ina. The spike-studded wheels
cut into the hardest ground and leave a chaos of ridges and chasms
which grows worse with every year.

We were seldom out of sight of mud-walled huts or tiny Chinese
villages, and Chinese peddlers passed our cars, carrying baskets of
fruit or trinkets for the women. Chinese farmers stopped to gaze at
us as we bounded over the ruts--in fact it was all Chinese, although
we were really in Mongolia. I was very eager to see Mongols, to
register first impressions of a people of whom I had dreamed so
much; but the blue-clad Chinaman was ubiquitous.

For seventy miles from Kalgan it was all the same--Chinese
everywhere. The Great Wall was built to keep the Mongols out, and by
the same token it should have kept the Chinese in. But the rolling,
grassy sea of the vast plateau was too strong a temptation for the
Chinese farmer. Encouraged by his own government, which knows the
value of just such peaceful penetration, he pushes forward the line
of cultivation a dozen miles or so every year. As a result the
grassy hills have given place to fields of wheat, oats, millet,
buckwheat, and potatoes.

The Mongol, above all things, is not a farmer; possibly because,
many years ago, the Manchus forbade him to till the soil. Moreover,
on the ground he is as awkward as a duck out of water and he is
never comfortable. The back of a pony is his real home, and he will
do wonderfully well any work which keeps him in the saddle. As Mr.
F. A. Larsen in Urga once said, "A Mongol would make a splendid cook
if you could give him a horse to ride about on in the kitchen." So
he leaves to the plodding Chinaman the cultivation of his boundless
plains, while he herds his fat-tailed sheep and goats and cattle.

[Illustration: Roy Chapman Andrews on "Kublai Khan"]

[Illustration: Yvette Borup Andrews, Photographer of the Expedition]

About two hours after leaving the mission station we passed the
limit of cultivation and were riding toward the Tabool hills. There
Mr. Larsen, the best known foreigner in all Mongolia, has a home,
and as we swung past the trail which leads to his house we saw one
of his great herds of horses grazing in the distance.

All the land in this region has long, rich grass in summer, and
water is by no means scarce. There are frequent wells and streams
along the road, and in the distance we often caught a glint of
silver from the surface of a pond or lake. Flocks of goats and
fat-tailed sheep drift