itches continuously screamed.

While the doctors fought with the devils, the ill people were left to
themselves. They lay in high fever under the heaps of sheepskins and
overcoats, were delirious, raved and threw themselves about. By the
braziers squatted adults and children who were still well, indifferently
chatting, drinking tea and smoking. In all the yurtas I saw the
diseased and the dead and such misery and physical horrors as cannot be
described.

And I thought: "Oh, Great Jenghiz Khan! Why did you with your keen
understanding of the whole situation of Asia and Europe, you who devoted
all your life to the glory of the name of the Mongols, why did you not
give to your own people, who preserve their old morality, honesty and
peaceful customs, the enlightenment that would have saved them from such
death? Your bones in the mausoleum at Karakorum being destroyed by
the centuries that pass over them must cry out against the rapid
disappearance of your formerly great people, who were feared by half the
civilized world!"

Such thoughts filled my brain when I saw this camp of the dead tomorrow
and when I heard the groans, shoutings and raving of dying men,
women and children. Somewhere in the distance the dogs were howling
mournfully, and monotonously the drum of the tired witch rolled.

"Forward!" I could not witness longer this dark horror, which I had
no means or force to eradicate. We quickly passed on from the ominous
place. Nor could we shake the thought that some horrible invisible
spirit was following us from this scene of terror. "The devils of
disease?" "The pictures of horror and misery?" "The souls of men
who have been sacrificed on the altar of darkness of Mongolia?" An
inexplicable fear penetrated into our consciousness from whose grasp
we could not release ourselves. Only when we had turned from the road,
passed over a timbered ridge into a bowl in the mountains from which we
could see neither Jahantsi Kure, the dugun nor the squirming grave of
dying Mongols could we breathe freely again.

Presently we discovered a large lake. It was Tisingol. Near the shore
stood a large Russian house, the telegraph station between Kosogol and
Uliassutai.

CHAPTER XXII

AMONG THE MURDERERS

As we approached the telegraph station, we were met by a blonde young
man who was in charge of the office, Kanine by name. With some little
confusion he offered us a place in his house for the night. When we
entered the r