l events, to
take the chill off the water, so as to disguise, by the warmth, its
brackish flavour and its disagreeable smell. We adopted this expedient.

You meet in the plains of Mongolia with a sort of grey squirrel, living
in holes like rats. These animals construct, over the opening of their
little dens, a sort of miniature dome, composed of grass, artistically
twisted, and designed as a shelter from wind and rain. These little
heaps of dry grass are of the form and size of molehills. The place
where we had now set up our tent abounded with these grey squirrels.
Thirst made us cruel, and we proceeded to level the house-domes of these
poor little animals, which retreated into their holes below as we
approached them. By means of this vandalism we managed to collect a
sackful of efficient fuel, and so warmed the water of the well, which was
our only aliment during the day.

Our provisions had materially diminished, notwithstanding the economy to
which the want of fire on this and other occasions had reduced us. There
remained very little meal or millet in our store bags, when we learned,
from a Tartar whom we met on the way, that we were at no great distance
from a trading station called _Chaborte_ (Slough.) It lay, indeed,
somewhat out of the route we were pursuing; but there was no other place
at which we could supply ourselves with provisions, until we came to
Blue-Town, from which we were distant a hundred leagues. We turned
therefore obliquely to the left, and soon reached Chaborte.

[Picture: Russian Convent at Peking]

CHAPTER III.

Festival of the Loaves of the Moon--Entertainment in a Mongol
tent--_Toolholos_, or Rhapsodists of Tartary--Invocation to
Timour--Tartar Education--Industry of the Women--Mongols in quest of
missing animals--Remains of an abandoned City--Road from Peking to
Kiaktha--Commerce between China and Russia--Russian Convent at Peking--A
Tartar solicits us to cure his Mother from a dangerous Illness--Tartar
Physicians--The intermittent Fever Devil--Various forms of Sepulture in
use among the Mongols--Lamasery of the Five Towers--Obsequies of the
Tartar Kings--Origin of the kingdom of Efe--Gymnastic Exercises of the
Tartars--Encounter with three Wolves--Mongol Carts.

We arrived at Chaborte on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, the
anniversary of great rejoicings among the Chinese. This festival, known
as the _Yue-Ping_ (Loaves of the Moon), dates f