a month each way. The Mongols who are employed for the work go
through from city to city in seven days, galloping all the way, with
frequent changes of horses and, less frequent, of men. And once a month
a parcels-post makes its slow way across, guarded by Cossacks.

Just why the Russians persist in this costly and slower method of
forwarding mails when the railway would do it in about half the time, I
cannot understand. One reason given me was that they might not care to
trust their mails to the Japanese, who control the southern section of
the Manchurian railway. And in case of trouble between the two powers
the Russians might find it convenient to have a connection of their own
with China. It seemed to me more like a part of Russia's plan of
"peaceful penetration," of extending her influence over Mongolia even to
the Great Wall. Kalgan seems already an outpost of Russia, with its
groups of Russian merchants, its Russian church, bank, post-office, and
consulate, one as much as the other representative of the White Tsar.

Toward the end of the first day from Kalgan we passed under the towers
which are all that is left here of the Great Wall, save the pile of
stones which marks the line where it stood. Built of mud faced with
stone, it has crumbled away, leaving the solid masonry towers standing
like giant sentinels to guard the road.

Here I stood face to face with another world. China lay behind me and
below, for we had risen some fifteen hundred feet since leaving Kalgan.
Before me stretched the great Mongolian plateau. The wind that cooled my
face had blown over thousands of miles of prairie and desert. The long
lines of stately, shambling camels, the great droves of sheep herded by
wild-looking men on sturdy little ponies told of an open country. Each
mile led deeper and deeper into the rolling grassland and the barren
waste of Gobi, and between me and the next town lay nearly seven hundred
miles of treeless plain and barren sand.

For four days we were crossing the grassland, wide stretches of gently
undulating country covered with thick rich grass; wave upon wave it
rolled like a great ocean up to the ramparts of China. As far as the eye
could reach there was nothing but living green untouched by plough or
spade, unbroken save where little lines of settlement stretched like
clutching fingers into the sea of grass, the menacing advance of the
Chinese, the tillers of the soil.

Much of the time I walked; the ai