t Kalgan on May 17. Mac, Owen, and I rode the forty miles to
Hei-ma-hou on horseback while Charles drove a motor occupied by the
three women.

There is a circuitous route by which cars can cross the pass under
their own power, but Coltman preferred the direct road and sent four
mules to tow the automobile up the mountains to the edge of the
plateau.

It was the same trail I had followed the previous September. Then,
as I stood on the summit of the pass gazing back across the far, dim
hills, my heart was sad for I was about to enter a new land alone.
My "best assistant" was on the ocean coming as fast as steam could
carry her to join me in Peking. I wondered if Fate's decree would
bring us here together that we might both have, as a precious
heritage for future years, the memories of this strange land of
romance and of mystery. Now the dream had been fulfilled and never
have I entered a new country with greater hopes of what it would
bring to me. Never, too, have such hopes been more gloriously
realized.

We packed the cars that night and at half past five the next morning
were on the road. The sky was gray and cloud-hung, but by ten
o'clock the sun burned out and we gradually emerged from the fur
robes in which we had been buried.

Instead of the fields of ripening grain which in the previous autumn
had spread the hills with a flowing golden carpet, we saw blue-clad
Chinese farmers turning long brown furrows with homemade plows. The
trees about the mission station had just begun to show a tinge of
green--the first sign of awakening at the touch of spring from the
long winter sleep. Already caravans were astir, and we passed lines
of laden camels now almost at the end of the long journey from Outer
Mongolia, whither we were bound. But, instead of splendid beasts
with upstanding humps and full neck beards, the camels now were
pathetic mountains of almost naked skin on which the winter hair
hung in ragged patches. The humps were loose and flat and flapped
disconsolately as the great bodies lurched along the trail.

When we passed one caravan a _debonnaire_ old Mongol wearing a derby
hat swung out of line and signaled us to stop. After an appraising
glance at the car he smiled broadly and indicated that he would like
to race. In a moment he was off yelling at the top of his lungs and
belaboring the bony sides of his camel with feet and hands. The
animal's ungainly legs swung like a windmill in every direction it
see