t the greenish sky drenched with the rays of the moon stood out
the jagged line of the mountains and the black silhouette of the tower
with its loopholes, through which the alternate scudding clouds and
light flashed.

When our party left Uliassutai, we traveled on leisurely, making
thirty-five to fifty miles a day until we were within sixty miles of
Zain Shabi, where I took leave of the others to go south to this place
in order to keep my engagement with Colonel Kazagrandi. The sun had just
risen as my single Mongol guide and I without any pack animals began to
ascend the low, timbered ridges, from the top of which I caught the last
glimpses of my companions disappearing down the valley. I had no idea
then of the many and almost fatal dangers which I should have to pass
through during this trip by myself, which was destined to prove much
longer than I had anticipated. As we were crossing a small river with
sandy shores, my Mongol guide told me how the Mongolians came there
during the summer to wash gold, in spite of the prohibitions of the
Lamas. The manner of working the placer was very primitive but the
results testified clearly to the richness of these sands. The Mongol
lies flat on the ground, brushes the sand aside with a feather and keeps
blowing into the little excavation so formed. From time to time he wets
his finger and picks up on it a small bit of grain gold or a diminutive
nugget and drops these into a little bag hanging under his chin. In such
manner this primitive dredge wins about a quarter of an ounce or five
dollars' worth of the yellow metal per day.

I determined to make the whole distance to Zain Shabi in a single day.
At the ourtons I hurried them through the catching and saddling of the
horses as fast as I could. At one of these stations about twenty-five
miles from the monastery the Mongols gave me a wild horse, a big, strong
white stallion. Just as I was about to mount him and had already touched
my foot to the stirrup, he jumped and kicked me right on the leg which
had been wounded in the Ma-chu fight. The leg soon began to swell and
ache. At sunset I made out the first Russian and Chinese buildings
and later the monastery at Zain. We dropped into the valley of a small
stream which flowed along a mountain on whose peak were set white rocks
forming the words of a Tibetan prayer. At the bottom of this mountain
was a cemetery for the Lamas, that is, piles of bones and a pack
of dogs. At last the