to get a a little dry fuel from the Mongols, but was rather brusquely
repulsed. And I now found out what was the matter. The people had
objected the night before to our camping near the yurts, for it was
their hayfield, theirs by the custom which forbids encroaching on the
land near a settlement, but the Russians had persisted, and now, in
their helpless anger,--they were an aged lama and an old woman,--they
refused to sell us wood. They stood aloof looking ruefully at their
trampled meadow as we made ready to start, hardly brightening up at all
when I tried to make good their loss. An Englishman or an American would
scarcely have asked my boy to sit at table with us, but on the other
hand he would have spared the Mongol's poor little hayfield.

The experience of the first day was repeated all the following days; a
late start in the morning, tedious halts at noon, getting into camp long
after dark. Indeed, I do not know when we should have been off in the
morning had it not been for Wang. He it was who roused the men, and did
his best to get a fire started, collecting fuel for the whole camp.
Although it rained every day, I do not think it ever occurred to the
Russians to avail themselves of a chance to get dry wood against the
next meal, and Wang remarked sadly that the Russians spent even more
time than the Mongols in drinking tea.

After the first day we left behind the wooded hills and were again in
rolling grassland like South Mongolia, but there was much more water;
indeed, the streams and bogs often forced us to make long detours, and
finally we came to a deep, strong-flowing river that could not be
forded; but there was a ferry-boat made of four huge, hollowed logs
securely lashed together and covered with a loose, rough flooring. The
horses were taken out and made to swim across, while the Mongol
ferrymen, all lamas and big fellows, went back and forth, taking us and
the carts over.

The second morning we started again without our breakfasts,--there was
no dry wood. Ivan, the tarantass driver, and the only one of the party
who knew the road, cheered us with the prospect of something hot at a
Russian colonist's house an hour farther on, but it was four hours' hard
driving before we reached the place, which then, however, more than made
good all he had claimed for it.

The two families that formed the little settlement were engaged in
cattle raising, and seemed prosperous and contented. Their houses and
shed