The Monticellonian., 1918-02-22
HE wayfarer in China who turns south to Anglicized Hong
 kong, multitudinous Canton or

hohSs SohIoh Oi
 that vivid hybrid of East and West, Shanghai, fails even to brush the strangest and most ancient mys- tery of the dragon kingdom. That mystery lies in North China, an im- memorial mystery that wraps Peking like an imperial mantle, somber northern inscrutability that enfolds the great wall as impenetrably as the mists obscuring it's turrets, writes Olive Gilbreath in Asia. It is q mys- tery so invincible that, once in a mans blood, there is little choice left him but to follow its lure on and on, seeking its source in that hinterland still farther to the north. From the Great Wall one can gaze far over this unknown land rushing swiftly away to the north, not days but months by caravan-the great plain of Mongolia.
 For the man gripped by this mystery of the northland, Kalgan, the border golia-five hours to the north of Peking as the Chinese train crawls- offers a convenient point of departure into Mongolia. Kalgan, lying at the foot of the pass, marks the end of the ancient caravan route between Siberia and China. Here all the wool and skins from the North are unloaded. Here is quartered a Chinese garrison against Mongolian uprising. Here the Russian tea trader pitches his blue tent. From here go the Russian overland mails. Here also are reload ed the strings of camels for their re- turn to the desert Kalgan attempts to collect itself between a river and the pass, but for dust it might be the desert itself. Small Chinese shops crowding the main street, worn into incredible ruts by generations of cart wheels, complete the suffocation-that is, if the wayfarer be abroad in July. Kalgan offers no inns and the foreign CT must beg friends among the scat tering missionaries or claim the hos pitality of the British-AmericaA tobac- co .mess." But roof-trees are wide and high in those far corners. and the hospitality is Of a heart-warming quality, such as fingers In the memory with rare deliciousness.
 You may ride into Mongolia as free lance on horseback if you are not q pampered child of civilization. But if you have degenerated through the complexities of life under a roof unable to live on strings of oatmeal, cheese and meat, and unwilling to c1aap m n Nnnup1 font-unr hn consigned to a caravan or a litter. Our equipages were least picturesque of all the ehoiees-a small caravan of Picking carts drawn not by camels, which are among the possibilities, but by horses and mules with donkey thrown in on the side for good meas ure. The carts. larger than the usual blue Picking carts and padded with sacks of grain and "rutaos" of bedding covered with heavy mats, had been drawn up within the mud walls of the compound long before the first streak of the July dawn.
 On the Road to Urga.
 We are out of the city now on that white road which crosses the plain for 30 days to Urga and for 60 days to Irkutsk-in dry months bowlder- strewn highway, in rainy months the bed of torrent which rushes down between the bluffs, carrying men and luckless caravans before it. The as- cent is gradual. almost imperceptible Mud villages cling limpet-wise to the bluffs, the doors leading into only bur rows in the hillside. It Is a. of desert coloring as is the desert sun, white hot But there Is charm in that flickering monotonous road, like the charm of a peasant melody, and the call of the trail is in the air-"over the world and under the world"
 At "tiffin" we came upon one of those charming little "genres" to be seen of- ten on Eastern roadways. In the scene were an inn, mud-walled. and court, also mud-walled, the entrance shaded by wide-spreading plane tree. From the lower branches of the plane tree hung a bird-cage; beneath it. carters and coolies and hawkers of thrushes, peddlers and camel-drivers sprawled or lounged or squatted and smoked, the blue of Chinese garments lying exquisitely cool against the bronze of Chinese skins in the chiaroscuro of