no purpose, such
terrible and painful labours; one's heart is pierced with grief, and
one's soul impressed with yearning for the day when these poor Tartars
shall consecrate to the service of the true God that religious energy
which they daily waste upon a vain and lying creed. We had hoped to
profit by the solemnities at Rache-Tchurin to announce the true faith to
the Ortous; but such was doubtless not the will of God, since He had
permitted us to lose our way on the very day which seemed most favourable
for our project. We accordingly passed through the Lamasery of
Rache-Tchurin without stopping, eager as we were to arrive at the very
source of that immense superstition, of which, as yet, we had only
witnessed a few shallow streams.

At a short distance from Rache-Tchurin we reached a road well marked out,
and covered with travellers. It was not, however, devotion that had set
these people in motion, as it had the pilgrims whom we saw at the
Lamasery; mere matter of business was leading them towards the
Dabsoun-Noor, (the Salt Lake,) celebrated throughout Western Mantchou,
and which supplies with salt, not only the adjacent Tartars, but also
several provinces of the Chinese Empire.

For a day's journey before you reach Dabsoun-Noor the soil changes by
degrees its form and aspect; losing its yellow tint, it becomes
insensibly white, as though thinly covered with snow. The earth swelling
in every direction, forms innumerable hillocks, cone-shaped, and of a
regularity so perfect that you might suppose them to have been
constructed by the hand of man. Sometimes they are grouped in heaps, one
on the other, like pears piled on a plate; they are of all sizes, some
but just created, others old, exhausted, and falling to decay. Around
these excrescences grow creeping thorns, long-pointed, without flowers or
leaves, which, intertwining spirally, surmount them with a sort of
net-work cap. These thorns are never found elsewhere than about these
hillocks; upon those of more recent growth they are firm, vigorous, and
full of shoots. Upon the elder elevations they are dried up, calcined by
the nitre, brittle, and in shreds.

As you look upon these numerous mounds, covered with a thick
efflorescence of nitre, it is obvious to your sense that beneath the
surface, and at no great depth, some great chemical operation is in
progress. Springs, generally so rare in the Ortous country, are here of
frequent occurrence, but the wa