deserts we traveled in forty-eight days.
We hid from the people as we journeyed, made short stops in the most
desolate places, fed for whole weeks on nothing but raw, frozen meat in
order to avoid attracting attention by the smoke of fires. Whenever we
needed to purchase a sheep or a steer for our supply department, we sent
out only two unarmed men who represented to the natives that they were
the workmen of some Russian colonists. We even feared to shoot, although
we met a great herd of antelopes numbering as many as five thousand
head. Behind Balir in the lands of the Lama Jassaktu Khan, who had
inherited his throne as a result of the poisoning of his brother at Urga
by order of the Living Buddha, we met wandering Russian Tartars who had
driven their herds all the way from Altai and Abakan. They welcomed us
very cordially, gave us oxen and thirty-six bricks of tea. Also they
saved us from inevitable destruction, for they told us that at this
season it was utterly impossible for horses to make the trip across the
Gobi, where there was no grass at all. We must buy camels by exchanging
for them our horses and some other of our bartering supplies. One of the
Tartars the next day brought to their camp a rich Mongol with whom he
drove the bargain for this trade. He gave us nineteen camels and took
all our horses, one rifle, one pistol and the best Cossack saddle. He
advised us by all means to visit the sacred Monastery of Narabanchi, the
last Lamaite monastery on the road from Mongolia to Tibet. He told us
that the Holy Hutuktu, "the Incarnate Buddha," would be greatly offended
if we did not visit the monastery and his famous "Shrine of Blessings,"
where all travelers going to Tibet always offered prayers. Our Kalmuck
Lamaite supported the Mongol in this. I decided to go there with the
Kalmuck. The Tartars gave me some big silk hatyk as presents and loaned
us four splendid horses. Although the monastery was fifty-five miles
distant, by nine o'clock in the evening I entered the yurta of this holy
Hutuktu.

He was a middle-aged, clean shaven, spare little man, laboring under the
name of Jelyb Djamsrap Hutuktu. He received us very cordially and was
greatly pleased with the presentation of the hatyk and with my
knowledge of the Mongol etiquette in which my Tartar had been long and
persistently instructing me. He listened to me most attentively and gave
valuable advice about the road, presenting me then with a ring which has
sin