My Audience With Chingghis Khan

VOLUME 160

NUMBER 1

JULY 1937

BY OWEN LATTIMORE

PEIPING
30 May, 1935
DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER:
The long break between my letters is because I have been away in the Ordos. And I’ve done it at last — the journey to the Sanctuary of Chingghis Khan. Not only that, but I attended the annual celebration, the ‘birthday’ of Chingghis. The hardest ride I’ve ever made, and I’m not surprised that no other outsider has ever seen the great takhiyal or Sacrifice of Chingghis, though others have seen the sanctuary, at least from the outside. It’s bad enough to get there; but to get there and get in has taken me years of planning, and a lot of luck at the end, and even then it could n’t have been done except for friendship.
David’s godfather, the Dilowa Gegen, a Living Buddha and the most important personage among the Khalkha exiles from Outer Mongolia, was to go with me, — he used to live in the Ordos, he said, in a previous incarnation, and still has a couple of lama monasteries there, — but at the last moment was n’t able to come. He lent

me his car for an essential part of the journey. I had to go up to Mongol headquarters at Pailingmiao, to get credentials; then down to the Yellow River, and then make the ride through the desert. The second night out from Kalgan I got to the Dilowa’s camp, in northern Durbet, where I had never been before. You can see in the far distance the plains of Outer Mongolia; and when he is here the Dilowa sits and grieves for Khalkha. Gendung, a big handsome man who has been with the Dilowa since childhood, looked after me here; a sweet-natured man and devoted to David. He served me mutton stew for supper, dished up in a big, white, shiny chamber pot. We sat holding hands all evening, in the gentle Mongol way, for we had not seen each other for about two years, and there was a lot of talk, and I had to go on the next morning, being in a great hurry.
The next day we came down from the north to the great monastery at Shira Muren, the chief monastery of Durbet; then west to Bato Khalagha (Pailingmiao). Luckily for me the man more or less in charge was Prince Gorjorjab of East Sunid, a huge hulk of a man and an old friend of mine, who said sure he would give me letters for the Ordos. Another old friend, one of the younger progressives, was temporarily in charge of the secretarial bureau, so he drafted the letters and made them good and powerful. The moment I had them I cleared out southward on the Kueihua road, but trouble with the car delayed us. We spent the night at Arash’s camp in sight of the Shiretu Gegen temple.
Arash, my caravan companion of a couple of years ago, had gone down to Kueihua, but Sereji, his girl, looked after us. Kongkhor, their little daughter, roused out at midnight to tote dung for the fire, sat up talking a streak. She always comes for me in an upward dive, landing with her arms around my neck. She had a silly little somersaulting mechanical doll, of which she pretended to be ghastly frightened. A boy of about her own age appeared from some tents near by, and we all sat around in the middle of the night playing with the silly doll. I invented the game of the doll being a lonely pilgrim on foot returning from Wu T’ai Shan, who came to a camp. The two children were the people of the camp. The doll said, very politely in the ceremonial form, ‘What is there that is strange and beautiful?’ (‘What is the news?’) and they answered, ‘Nothing at all — fair and peaceful.’ Then they asked him the same question and at the moment he replied, ‘Nothing at all — fair and peaceful,’ he would begin ‘throwing fits’ by turning somersaults. They squawked with joy and excitement. Some pilgrims were staying at Arash’s camp, which pleased everybody all the more with the childish game.
The next morning we cleared early, and bucketed down the Onggon Obo pass into Kueihua in good time, and found Arash at Torgny’s house. Arash took it as a matter of course that I could n’t go without him. Torgny and I had planned and speculated over this Chingghis journey for years, and once or twice almost attempted it, but never got away because of bandits or something like that. This time my letters gave a better prospect than we had ever had, and also the Ordos was quieter than for years; but Torgny was doubtful about leaving Brita, who was not long out from Sweden. Only at the last moment for catching the train he finally decided to come; the result was that he got aboard dressed in an ordinary town suit, with his wolfskin coat for total luggage; and we found on the train that he had brought neither his passport nor a supply of visiting cards, which are quite as important as a passport.
On the train going the hundred miles to Paot’ou, on the Yellow River, we began to work up the idea of the expedition. It was decided that I should be ignorant of Chinese, and Torgny do all the Chinese talking, while I kept strictly to Mongol. This would provide the explanation for there being two of us, as in the mixed Ordos country both Chinese and Mongol are necessary. We did n’t have to plan anything special for Arash; he always ferrets his way through anything.
Because of our shabby appearance — like Torgny, I had only a greatcoat for equipment, and Arash was the same, while films and silver money went in a little sausage-bag that would tre snugly to a saddle — we went to the most expensive inn when we got off the train, to compensate on the ‘face’ question. The most expensive inn in a place like Paot’ou is always full of prostitutes, gamblers, drug peddlers, and the scum of the frontier. This meant, of course, coming right under the observation of the crookedest part of the police and detective force.
I had a letter to be delivered to the Paot’ou residence of one of the Ordos princes, commanding him to supply transport into the Ordos, under terms which would cause me to be passed on from Banner to Banner as an official traveler. We got a rather bad reception. A dilapidated, once magnificent palace. We were kept waiting in a filthy kind of outhouse, inhabited by opium-smoking, ragged soldiers, and finally were told that we could start the next morning. A man would come early to give us our marching orders.
On going back to the inn, there was announced, with elaborate casualness, a ‘ visitor.’ A more obvious police spy I never saw. All the time we were in Paot’ou no uniformed police ever demanded our passports, as they had a perfect right to do. They must have decided that we were pretty suspicious, and therefore not lightly to be interfered with. The spy began to fish for information, and we decided that the best thing was to be frank and open. So we told the exact truth, about wanting to go down to the Ordos to see the Chingghis Khan ceremonies. You could see the disbelief spreading over the spy’s face like an unsuccessful sunset. It just confirmed our dubiousness. And we were not interfered with in the slightest.
The next morning some rather mouldy soldiers and a not very hopefullooking carter turned up. We drove the two or three miles to the Yellow River, and crossed on a ferry, quartering upstream against a turbid current, with the aid of a sail which was really a cloth screen held up on two poles by a lot of yelling men. Everybody who was not yelling was whistling, ‘to help the wind.’ From the Ordos bank of the river we struck inland a few miles, to the palace of the same prince whose town quarters we had visited the evening before. We saw the petty officials in charge, and with some difficulty transport was arranged for the next day.
When, on the next day, we got started, we saw that the difficulty was no question of unwillingness, but of the transport itself. My papers gave us the right to ola (wula) — that is, transport commandeered in the old Mongol style, by which you take animals, ride them until you come across more animals, drop the old and take on the new. That is all right in rich nomad country, with plenty of riding cattle; but here it was being applied in a desperately poor, settled country, where years and years of banditry and ruthless taxation had cleaned the wretched people out of livestock. On the whole journey we straggled across country from farm to farm, hovel to hovel, and field to field, in search of something to ride. Several times a horse would be taken straight from the plough and ridden for twenty miles — the owner, with no preparation, no food, no bedding, leaving his plough in the furrow and trotting despondently after us. Pretty sickening; but the only way we could have traveled — hired transport would have been an indication that we were not important enough to be accorded official transport, but at the same time rich enough to be worth banditing. Sometimes we managed to pay without our escorts knowing about it, but even this was risky.
I must say we were all pleased when at one place two of our soldiers tried to commandeer a horse from a Mongol who showed a trace of the old Mongol spirit; he cuffed one of our soldiers on the ear, kicked another in the rear, jumped on the horse, and rode off into the sands.
The bandits have been so rife in the Ordos for the past eight or nine years that it has been the worst traveling country in China. The banditry here includes a number of elements; one recent leader was a kind of squire, with broad lands and many hundred tenants of his own, and a kind of fortified city in which he lived. The leader last winter, Yang Hou-hsiao, Yang the Little Wart, was from Torgny’s native town of Sarachi. He came of country people who had been dispossessed by tax gatherers. He had at one time attended for a while the school of the mission established by Torgny’s parents. As a bandit, he showed a spirit that made him popular with many of the peasantry, who had for years been flayed by soldiers and bandits alike. Ordos banditry had flourished on a tradition of ‘herding’ the bandits, instead of fighting them. Wherever they appeared, they were hustled and chivied along until they passed into neighboring territory, where the pursuit was dropped until the local forces began it again. Bandits and soldiers were two branches of the same racket; the bandits gave the soldiers opium in trade for ammunition.
Yang Hou-hsiao proclaimed himself the real enemy of soldiers, civil officials, and landlords. Instead of playing the game with the official troops, he killed as many as he could. At the same time he went lightly on the peasants. He developed steadily into the type of bandit who makes the most hopeful material for the initial period of a ‘ bandit-peasant’ uprising, to be followed by communism. Last winter he got to the point where he threatened to establish communication between the Red areas in Shensi Province and Outer Mongolia, by breaking through on the south from the Ordos into Shensi and at the same time breaking through on the north from Inner Mongolia into Outer Mongolia. This at last got the Suiyuan military so scared that they sent out troops against him in earnest, with a lot of artillery and orders not to come back until they had cracked his power wide open. There was something like a real battle near the Yellow River, on the line where Yang was trying to break through Inner Mongolia, and Yang at last was heavily defeated and his force of several thousand shattered. He himself was driven south into Shensi, and is now said to have been killed. It was this fighting which had broken down the banditry enough to make it possible for us to travel.
Yet peace meant so little that wherever we went the sight of more than two horsemen was enough to send people scattering into the dunes. When traveling at night it was almost impossible to find food or new transport; everything vanished. It is the men who run away — if they have time they take horses and cattle with them. The women and children stay behind, quaking. The bandits can do as they like about the women; a baby suspected of being bandit-begotten is thrown out to die. There was banditry here and there all about us as we rode; the ‘unusually peaceful season ’ meant simply no ‘ bandit armies ’ of several hundred or thousand men.
Foreign travelers have naturally not been frequent during these years; most of the people we encountered associated foreigners only with the Belgian Catholic missions. At several places where our papers had to be read to verify our right to transport, I had to read them out myself, as nobody else understood written Mongol. At one such place, where I had just been explaining that Torgny was Swedish and I American, we heard a knowing voice remark in Chinese, on the other side of the paper window of the hut, ‘American nothing! They’re a couple of educated Tatars [Mongols] who’ve bought themselves some foreign clothes! ’

Copyright 1937, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

After several days of drifting around the country practically stealing people’s horses, we got down about 130 miles south of the bend of the Yellow River. Here we struck a tiny patch of ground reserved from the all-devastating farmland. Between the two ridges of a shallow valley no ploughed furrows were to be seen; nothing but the thin grass of the old half-desert Ordos, and a slender stream running from nowhere to nowhere. At one lip of the valley stood an enclosure: the place where the relics of Chingghis are stored through the year. In the flat of the valley was a city of tents, with streets running through it; orderly and parallel from a distance, but jostling and untidy and full of life when you are shouldering through the streets; little stalls everywhere, and dugout restaurants roofed over with thatch and mud; and tent restaurants and booths. In the market there was a spread of cloth, and buckets and pitchforks and saddles and silverware for women’s headdresses, and all kinds of extravagances that cost about two cents and last less than two days — an illusion of luxury for a miserable people to give themselves, in the excitement of the market, a brief fancy of spending lots of real cash on exotic luxuries.
Torgny and Arash and the soldiers had to be parked for a while in a crowded round dingy white felt tent, while I went to present my credentials in the tent of the prince who this year is acting as President of the League of the seven Ordos tribes. He was more like an old-style Manchu mandarin, with a touch of the desert and nomad about him, than like the present run of Ordos princes, who are either heroin-smoking young rips or opium-smoking, middle-aged, grasping, peasant-minded squires — landlords writ large into fake aristocrats.
We stayed in the yamen-tent of the Damals of the Darkhat. Of the seven tribes of the Ordos, the Darkhat are those who have charge of the sanctuary of Chingghis, and are repositories of the traditions of the ceremonial followed at the sacrifices. They are divided under twelve Damals, who administer their affairs and supervise the shrine. As Torgny and I had no other equipment, we spread my coat under the two of us and his over us, and slept huddled together. Arash slept in his own sheepskin.
It was on the day after our arrival that we made our sacrifices; and this business went eminently well, because no crowd came edging round us, the tale having gone out through the encampment that we were Mongols down from Bato Khalagha on a special mission. Thus no one was impelled by curiosity to see what the foreigners were up to, and we went through the ceremonial as naturally as possible.
The sanctuary consists of a tent in which are supposed to be the remains of Chingghis, one in which are kept bows, swords, and saddles, one which is the tent of the Empress, and one which is the tent of a concubine. The tradition that the actual remains are kept here is a strong one, but even so it is confused, some saying that the coffined bodies are here, others that only the cremated ashes are preserved, and others that the relics are pictures, painted (or more probably moulded into images) with the ashes. As a matter of fact, Chingghis was taken after his death back to Outer Mongolia, and buried there in a grave whose place was concealed; what is left in the Ordos is a collection of relics; and how many of these are of the actual date of Chingghis is doubtful.
Our sacrifice was one of three sheep. We were paced through the ceremony by five heralds, or masters of ceremonies, two of them being Damals and one a representative of the Chigolgan Darogha or Senior Prince of the League — a special honor. First we were ranged about thirty paces in front of the Tent of Chingghis. Two of our sponsors went forward to the tent to ‘announce’ us — the procedure is like being received in audience, in some respects, and like a religious sacrifice in others — while the other three remained at hand to prompt us. As the promptings were all in Mongol, I had to relay them out of the corner of my mouth to Torgny, keeping at the same time a decorous expression on the front elevation of my face.
When the announcers went to the door of the great tent, we fell on both knees. Then we prostrated ourselves three times. Then an attendant gave me a lamp, filled with butter (my position was in the centre, between Torgny and Arash), which I held forehead high; oh, I forgot — we had meantime advanced into the tent, and were now kneeling before the ‘altar.’ A herald then cried our names, in impromptu alliterative verse, enunciated in a special chant, describing our journey from afar through numerous perils to pay our respects to the mighty and holy Chingghis. Three more prostrations. The officiants then offered incense on our behalf. Three more prostrations.
Then out in front of the tent again, to the thirty-pace distance, where we knelt once more until the attendants came with a goblet of silver, needing all the strength of a man to hold it breast-high. Another attendant dipped from this vessel two small silver cups of sarhod, or milk-wine, and placed them on a silver platter in my hands. These I raised forehead-high, while Torgny and Arash each supported one of my elbows (not because I needed it, but to signify that they were participants in the sacrifice) and we advanced again and entered the tent. Here the cups were placed on the altar, and we made three more prostrations, while the herald recited the piety of our offering.
Then we withdrew from the tent once again, and repeated the wine offering; this offering we made altogether six times, each time with three prostrations. After each offering, the wine which had been placed on the altar in the little cups was poured back again into the great vessel; and after the sixth offering the great vessel itself was brought again to us, as we stood before the tent, and held up to us to drink from in turn, being passed from one to the other until we had finished it.
Once more we entered the tent and knelt, this time for our meat offering, from the sheep of our sacrifice; but this offering was laid before the altar by attendants, not by ourselves. The herald then asked each of us our names, and, as we answered, intoned our virtue as pilgrims. We then prostrated ourselves again, each of us at the same time taking from his breast a silk khatak, lifted up in offering with both hands, to be taken from us by an attendant and hung on the altar. Each of us was then given a janggha — also a kind of scarf, but different from a khatak — and we then rose, moved to the left, and rubbed the janggha on the altar chest, which we also touched with our heads in reverence. Moving round to the right, we repeated this, and so completed the ceremonies of the Tent of Chingghis.
The furnishings of this tent were a silver-plated bench of k’ang-table shape, which was the altar; behind this a great silver-plated wooden chest; on this a smaller chest, also silver-plated, which was supposed to contain the mummy, bones, ashes or image moulded from ashes, of Chingghis; on this a much smaller chest or box, hanging at the front of it a modern and inferior glass mirror. The round lock plates of the ‘ coffin ’ chest were of gold, or gold wash. The silver plating was inscribed; the lettering was not an ancient Mongol, and I had time to make out a reference to the ‘Leagues and Banners of Inner and Outer Mongolia,’ which proves that the work was of Manchu date. There was a similar inscription on the great wine chalice. At our left, in this tent, was also a spear.
Some years ago I bought from a Chinese dealer, who collects most of his things in the Ordos, two small wine cups, which I thought at the time might be butter lamps. Both were inscribed; one, as near as I remember, ‘presented by the prince of Hagochit [Hochit].’ I think the lettering was comparable to the lettering on the silverware I saw at Ejen Horo. As the sanctuary was bandited at least once, it may be that the silver wine cups I have are from the treasure. They are now in the Peabody Museum at Harvard.
From this tent we moved to the south end of the line of four, the Tent of the Bows and Quivers. Here we knelt, facing a kind of throne, across and above which were placed two silver-plated bows; at the left, a pile of four silver-encrusted saddles; below the bows, a sheaf of arrows. One of the saddles had gold, or gold wash, as well as silver on it. At the left of the altar, two swords in one sheath. After presenting a khatak each, we touched our foreheads to the saddles on our left, then moved around to the right and did the same to the bows.
From the door of the Tent of the Bows and Quivers we went, moving clockwise, around behind the tent, then behind the white camels tethered at the back of the Tent of Chingghis, then behind the Tent of the Empress, and so round to the front of the Tent of the Empress. From there we went to the Tent of the Concubine, and then to the left-flank front of the row of tents, to the ‘wine cart.’ A very ordinary water cart, with ordinary water casks on it, but covered with a rough hooped canopy. On one shaft of the cart a Chinese red-paper New Year good-luck label, reading jih hsing ch’ien li, ‘a thousand li a day.’ This modern water cart, however, symbolizes the ancient cart following the herds of mares, for the making of milk-wine. Some pilgrims put wine, milk, butter, or water on these pegs, or wrap them with khataks.
Then forward, out in front of the cart. A ‘sacred’ white horse, said to represent a huluk or charger of Chingghis, is led out. We touch our foreheads to the muzzle of this horse, and then bow and duck leftward, thus passing under his neck — obviously once a sign of submission, now of reverence. The behavior of the horse during this bumping and ducking is an omen — if he stands patiently, it is a good sign. Then back, still moving clockwise, around the Tent of Chingghis, to the place where are tethered the two sacred white camels, with twisted soft silk halters of the Imperial yellow. We pluck a tuft of wool from one of them, and the ceremony is closed.

The next day, the twenty-sixth of April, was almost still and windless; one could stand upright out in the open. On this day the sacred tents were ‘invited’ back to the permanent stockaded sanctuary. The Tent of Chingghis was lifted entire and set on a great twowheeled cart, drawn by the two sacred white camels. The Tent of the Bows and Quivers was loaded on a similar cart, drawn by horses. While this was going on, many pilgrims crawled reverently under the carts. The most splendid of the silver-decorated saddles was put on one of the sacred white horses; the bridle also was of silver and gold wash. The sacred bows were carried by a rider, hung across his chest, the bowstrings in front and the silverplated bows across his back. The internal gear from the Tent of the Empress was loaded with the Tent of Chingghis; but this tent itself, and that of the Jungar Khaton, were not moved bodily. They were to be stripped down later and moved like ordinary ger, or Mongol felt tents.
We left this day, and had a terrific time getting away. We were to travel in company with the Jahirakchi Taiji of East Hochit, and the young biteshi, or ‘scribe,’ who had been the official delegates from Bato Khalagha — the Taiji being a descendant of Chingghis. The ‘face’ accorded in getting to the ceremonies tended to wear out in the scramble of getting away. Every highranking visitor was wanting escorts and guides; and the officials wanted guards for themselves on their way home. The tendency was to assign escorts, and then let you worry for yourself. The news had just come in that some bandits who had been taken into the Ordos Mongol troops during the winter had mutinied and gone off on the loose — about sixty of them. That meant that similar mutinies might be starting all over the place. At least half of the troops at the great gathering were also of similar provenance, so assigning escorts was more of a gesture than anything else.
We were allotted four soldiers (all Chinese, not Mongols, and all bandits) and one young Mongol dahira or courier — who, thank God, was a fiery young devil. None of us said anything to each other, but we all had the same thought: it was known we were leaving, and plenty of time was being wasted, so that if anyone should slip off to give word to bandits we were easy pickings. We had tipped our escort well on arriving, hoping to hold the men over our stay, so that we could have them again going back; but they had deserted, with their tips, and they might have got in touch with bandits. Also we could n’t get our new escort together, and they might be casting about to get in touch with bandits. We finally left about three in the afternoon — much too late. We were wide open for anyone to grab. Our Mongol dahira had not been able to commandeer a saddle, and he was riding a wild, lashing, unbreakable devil of a horse. He rode like a devil himself. Bracing his hands against the brute’s neck to short-rein it and keep it from getting its head down (it wanted to pig-jump), he ripped the nail clean out of one finger. He did n’t flinch, and kept on riding like a wild one.
Two of our escort turned up at the start. One mumbled something about getting his greatcoat, rode off into the crowd, and never came back. We started with one soldier — the dahira was n’t even armed. The one soldier complained that he was poor, and had n’t been paid for months; was he going to get well paid for risking his life with us? It was practically a holdup; we managed to evade him and cajole him and bluff him along with us for some miles; we knew he’d never ride out the day, but we wanted to get him far enough along so that he could n’t immediately get into touch with anyone, unless by accident, after deserting us.
The thing was to crowd in as long a ride as possible — to get farther than anyone would count on our getting so late in the afternoon, in order to shake off anybody who might be following us. It was the gray-haired old Jahirakchi, who turned out to be a man of resolution, and the hellion dahira who kept us going. The Jahirakchi set the pace, pushing along as if we had good horses instead of shaky commandeered skeletons, and as if we were going to get somewhere definite, pretty soon. The dahira, on his wild horse, careered all over the place, managing in some miraculous way to cover both sides of the line of march, looking for fresh horses. When he got one, he drove it along to us, and pretty soon we had almost as many led horses as ridden ones. This was breaking the rules; when you commandeer a horse, you ought to cast the one you are riding. He drove one wild horse up alongside of us, but no one could catch it, as it was unbridled and we had no lasso or lasso pole. Finally the dahira galloped up beside it, leaned over, caught it by the mane, drew himself from his horse to the new horse, then slid down, still at full gallop, along the shoulder of the caught horse, hanging by the mane with one hand and grabbing at the nostrils with the other, to choke it. The finest piece of riding I’ve seen. The pain of hanging to a horse’s mane with one hand, which had the whole nail ripped off one finger, must have been pretty bad.
We held a good pace. As soon as one horse tired, we shifted to a new horse, continuing to lead the tired one; running unridden, it would freshen up to a certain extent and could be ridden again later, at least for a shift of a few miles. Being the heaviest, I rode three horses flat before we finished the thirty miles that we managed to make. The whining soldier finally balked altogether. The dahira took him like a whirlwind; before the soldier knew what had happened, the dahira had taken his rifle and his hat (a hat being about all the uniform most of these half-bandit soldiers have). We left the soldier by the road, and kept on. Long before dark there was not a soul to be seen on the road — a bad sign. We were looking for a guide; we should soon be out of country that the dahira knew, and we had to get somewhere in the dark.
It was already night when we struck a farm settlement; but everybody ran out on us except the women. We did nab one man, but he slipped us. We got a horse at last, and a man appeared to follow the horse and reclaim it when we should cast it. Thus we got a guide, and he finally took us aside from the road, to a small village which had a ‘headman’ (who would be some kind of security for us), to stop for the night. We were getting near a town, but the going was uncertain, and even if we had got to the town we should probably have been shot at before getting near enough to explain ourselves. We had by then made thirty miles, in a little less than six hours. It does n’t sound like a lot of riding, for Mongolia; but you should have seen the kind of animals we had to do it on, and the kind of country we were crossing!
The next morning we made a short ride to Tung Sheng Hsien, the Chinese ‘town.’ It turned out to be a large hollow surrounded by walls. The officials were extremely friendly, but would n’t provide us with escort or transport for the next stretch of the journey. This hsien or county is a Chinese enclave between two Mongol Banners, and they did n’t want to get mixed up in any wild Mongol customs.
Suddenly our wild young Mongol dahira came in, and opened up on the officials in fluent Chinese. But what Chinese! He learned it from bandits, all right. ‘I’ve been talking to your sons-of-bitches of soldiers out there, and they say that not a — one of them will stir on the road with us. And our — horses are worn out, and there is n’t a — donkey in this damned hole, let alone a horse, — its mother.’
And lots more of the same. The officials shriveled as if they were being hectored by a bandit, but the wild young Mongol did n’t even realize it. He merely thought he was expressing himself in the normal Chinese language. All of these peculiarly foul expressions of the Chinese frontier swearing don’t even exist in the Mongol language; many a Mongol does n’t know a ward of Chinese except these expressions, which he uses when he wants to be more rude than a Mongol should be.
Anyhow, we found ourselves all of a sudden and unexpectedly provided with two Chinese soldiers. The young Mongol, for whom we had all conceived an affection, said he’d go on with us to the next Mongol post. We rode off; and pretty soon we caught up with a caravan carrying coal to Paot’ou. Our two Chinese soldiers immediately decided to rest their horses. Each climbed up on an already overloaded camel and ordered a caravan man to lead his horse for him. We went on and left them. When we got to the Mongol post, the dahira turned us over to the people there and sat for ten minutes drinking tea, examining the raw end of his finger where the nail had been torn off, and expressing, without a pause, in the filthiest Chinese I’ve ever heard, opinions on ‘the kind of soldiers you find along the roads nowadays.’ Then, unbreakable young man, he jumped up and said he’d got to be getting along for home. He thought if he got going right away and kept on slap through the night he’d make it by morning. Off he went, riding one pony and herding eleven — our mounts and remounts, which he was going to return to their pasture; and God, how we missed him!
This post, nominally Mongol, was manned by a troop of bandits who had joined in a body. The soldiers were all taking in opium as fast as they could puff. Nobody wanted to go off and look for horses for us; still less to ride with us. The old Jahirakchi made a bluff at them and dressed them down in Mongol; they refused to understand enough Mongol to talk, but muttered sullenly. Then Oberg turned his wiles on them in Chinese, but did n’t make much headway. The two men who did the least indirect swearing at us finally sidled out and made a stab at the job. Some sick-looking horses were produced, and two donkeys; we were to cast the donkeys as soon as we found horses, and the bandit-soldiers said they knew where to find the horses.
We camped that night at the usual terrified farmhouse, hidden up a gully at the side of the road. Rumors of bandits in the general direction of our road for the next day. We had all horses by now, anyhow, and the donkeys were discarded. In fact, we had two stallions — an extremely rare thing, as bandits and soldiers do not like stallions; they yell in the night, and a stallion’s call carries an awful distance. Not only that, but our two stallions were perfectly matched; and not only were they perfectly matched, but each of them was a piebald of by no means easy pattern. Not that these are important details, but somehow they fit this part of the journey, which was all cuckoo.
By noon the next day we got into safe country. We were within the ‘home sphere’ of the Prince of Dalat. Planted out in a sort of screen at a good distance from his ‘palace’ are a number of comparatively well-off landlordfarmers. These the prince supplies with arms; and bandits do not like to try to ride through a screen like this, because the sands and the generally difficult going make it easier to bushwhack the bandits than it is for the bandits to pick up a fat landlord. Before getting to the first of these farms, one of our now very friendly men rode ahead; if the whole party of us had showed over the skyline at once, somebody would have begun popping at us, since that’s the way they ask questions in this country.
From here it was only eight miles to the Dalat Prince’s; we wanted to go on another six miles to a barracks, so as to be nearer to the Yellow River. It was typical of the untamed bandit-soldiers of this country that in the headquarters of the prince who employed them, when asked by the officials who were the prince’s personal representatives to take us on another six miles, they refused— and with plenty of lurid language. Not that they disliked us; we were getting on beautifully by now; but they did n’t like being ordered around, and besides they wanted to settle down to their opium. So we got another guide and straggled off. That night we slept near the Yellow River: in the morning we crossed the Paot’ou, and by afternoon had reached Kueihua and Torgny’s house, and a hot bath.
And that’s how I had my imperial audience with Chingghis.
OWEN