agitation against the
Chinese policy in their country; the Chinese raged and demanded from the
Mongolians the payment of taxes for the full period since the autonomy
of Mongolia had been forcibly extracted from Peking; Russian colonists
who had years before settled near the town and in the vicinity of the
great monasteries or among the wandering tribes had separated into
factions and were fighting against one another; from Urga came the
news of the struggle for the maintenance of the independence of Outer
Mongolia, led by the Russian General, Baron Ungern von Sternberg;
Russian officers and refugees congregated in detachments, against which
the Chinese authorities protested but which the Mongols welcomed; the
Bolsheviki, worried by the formation of White detachments in Mongolia,
sent their troops to the borders of Mongolia; from Irkutsk and Chita
to Uliassutai and Urga envoys were running from the Bolsheviki to the
Chinese commissioners with various proposals of all kinds; the Chinese
authorities in Mongolia were gradually entering into secret relations
with the Bolsheviki and in Kiakhta and Ulankom delivered to them the
Russian refugees, thus violating recognized international law; in
Urga the Bolsheviki set up a Russian communistic municipality; Russian
Consuls were inactive; Red troops in the region of Kosogol and the
valley of the Selenga had encounters with Anti-Bolshevik officers; the
Chinese authorities established garrisons in the Mongolian towns
and sent punitive expeditions into the country; and, to complete the
confusion, the Chinese troops carried out house-to-house searches,
during which they plundered and stole.

Into what an atmosphere we had fallen after our hard and dangerous trip
along the Yenisei, through Urianhai, Mongolia, the lands of the Turguts,
Kansu and Koko Nor!

"Do you know," said my old friend to me, "I prefer strangling Partisans
and fighting with the hunghutze to listening to news and more anxious
news!"

He was right; for the worst of it was that in this bustle and whirl of
facts, rumours and gossip the Reds could approach troubled Uliassutai
and take everyone with their bare hands. We should very willingly have
left this town of uncertainties but we had no place to go. In the north
were the hostile Partisans and Red troops; to the south we had already
lost our companions and not a little of our own blood; to the west raged
the Chinese administrators and detachments; and to the east