the sacred lamassery. But all that the outsider sees is a weak,
debased-looking man whose vices should soon end his days even if he
escapes the lamas' villainy. Formerly he amused himself with Western
toys, photography, and especially motor-cars. It is true the millions of
Mongols look to the Gigin as their divine leader, but after all there
are ranks even in divinityship, and when the Dalai Lama, fleeing from
Lhasa before the Younghusband expedition in 1904, took refuge here, they
promptly forgot the smaller god to worship at the shrine of a first-rate
one, and the Gigin's nose was put out of joint, and stayed so until his
distinguished guest had departed. It was to appease his wounded vanity
that a Russian official presented him with a motor-car which had been
brought to Urga at vast expenditure of effort and money. When I asked
what he could have been expected to do with it, for roads there were
none, the answer was that to the divine one with fifteen thousand lamas
to do his bidding, anything was possible. A road was, indeed,
constructed to the Bogdo's summer retreat, a few miles away, but alas!
no chauffeur was supplied with the motor-car, and it would not run of
itself. When I passed through Urga last year I was told that the
undaunted Bogdo had ordered a second car, fully equipped with chauffeur
and all, from America, which was even then at Tientsin, so by now he may
be getting stuck in the muddy lanes of the Sacred City,--unless he has
put away such childish things to take up the farce of governing Mongolia
under Russian guidance.

[Illustration: A LAMA BOUND FOR URGA]

[Illustration: A MONGOL BELLE, URGA]

For more than three hundred years Lamaism has held Mongolia in its grip,
checking the development of the country, sapping the vitality and
self-respect of the people. More even than every other man you meet is a
lama, for it is estimated, by those who know the situation best, that
five eighths of the men are lamas, red or yellow, and the evil is on the
increase. At least, two generations ago Abbe Huc placed the proportion
at one in three. But lamas are not all of one sort. There are those who
live in community, permanently attached to some one of the hundreds of
lamasseries. They represent probably the abler or more ambitious in the
priesthood, and are better versed and more regular in the observances of
their order, living a life perhaps not unlike that in Western
monasteries in their period of decline. I