and as
though every moment we were going to be stifled. This impression,
however, was evanescent; and we soon got to think that, after all, it was
more comfortable and more agreeable, after a day's march, to take up our
abode in a warm, well-stored inn, than to have to set up a tent, to
collect fuel, and to prepare our own very meagre repast, before we could
take our rest.

[Picture: Tartar Agriculture]

The inhabitants of Western Toumet, as may well be imagined, have
completely lost the stamp of their original Mongol character; they have
all become, more or less, Chinese; many of them do not even know a word
of the Mongol language. Some, indeed, do not scruple to express contempt
for their brothers of the desert, who refuse to subject their prairies to
the ploughshare; they say, how ridiculous is it for men to be always
vagabondizing about, and to have merely wretched tents wherein to shelter
their heads, when they might so easily build houses, and obtain wealth
and comforts of all kinds from the land beneath their feet. And, indeed,
the Western Toumetians are perfectly right in preferring the occupation
of agriculturist to that of shepherd, for they have magnificent plains,
well watered, fertile, and favourable to the production of all kinds of
grain crops. When we passed through the country, harvest was over; but
the great stacks of corn that we saw in all directions told us that the
produce had been abundant and fine. Everything throughout Western Toumet
bears the impress of affluence; nowhere, go in what direction you may, do
you see the wretched tumble-down houses that disfigure the highways and
by-ways of China; nowhere do you see the miserable, half-starved,
half-clothed creatures that pain the hearts of travellers in every other
country: all the peasants here are well fed, well lodged, and well
clothed. All the villages and roads are beautified with groups and
avenues of fine trees; whereas, in the other Tartar regions, cultivated
by the Chinese, no trees are to be seen; trees are not even planted, for
everybody knows they would be pulled up next day by some miserable pauper
or other, for fuel.

We had made three days' journey through the cultivated lands of the
Toumet, when we entered _Kou-Kou-Hote_ (Blue Town), called in Chinese
_Koni-Hoa-Tchen_. There are two towns of the same name, five _lis_
distant from one another. The people distinguish them by calling the one
"Old Town,