ge that, before you would permit us to pass, you
exacted from us a sum of money instead of passports. We shall then
address ourselves to the first Mandarin we meet, and ask him whether what
you have done is consistent with the laws of the empire." The man at
once gave up the point. "Oh," said he, "since you have been to Peking,
no doubt the Emperor has given you special privileges," and then he
added, in a whisper, and smilingly, "Don't tell the Tartars here that I
have let you pass _gratis_."

It is really pitiable to observe these poor Mongols travelling in China;
everybody thinks himself entitled to fleece them, and everybody succeeds
in doing so to a marvellous extent. In all directions they are
encountered by impromptu custom-house officers, by persons who exact
money from them on all sorts of pretences, for repairing roads, building
bridges, constructing pagodas, etc. etc. First, the despoilers proffer
to render them great services, call them brothers and friends, and give
them wholesale warnings against ill-designing persons who want to rob
them. Should this method not effect an unloosening of the purse-strings,
the rascals have recourse to intimidation, frighten them horribly with
visions of Mandarins, laws, tribunals, prisons, punishments, threaten to
take them up, and treat them, in short, just like mere children. The
Mongols themselves materially aid the imposition by their total ignorance
of the manners and customs of China. At an inn, instead of using the
room offered to them, and putting their animals in the stables, they
pitch their tent in the middle of the court-yard, plant stakes about it,
and fasten their camels to these. Very frequently they are not permitted
to indulge this fancy, and in this case they certainly enter the room
allotted to them, and which they regard in the light of a prison; but
they proceed there in a manner truly ridiculous. They set up their
trivet with their kettle upon it in the middle of the room, and make a
fire beneath with argols, of which they take care to have a store with
them. It is to no purpose they are told that there is in the inn a large
kitchen where they can cook their meals far more comfortably to
themselves; nothing will dissuade them from their own kettle and their
own aboriginal fire in the middle of the room. When night comes they
unroll their hide-carpets round the fire, and there lie down. They would
not listen for a moment to the proposition o