Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1918-03-01

turns south to Anglicized Hong
kong, multitudinous Canton or
that vivid hybrid of East and
West, Shanghai, fails even to brush
the s%trangest and most ancient mys-
terry of the dragon kingdom. That
mystery lies in North China, an i'm
memorial mystery that wraps Picking
like an imperial mantle, a somber
northern inscrutability that enfolds
the great wall as impenetrably as
the mists %obscuring its t~urrets, writes
Olive Gilbreath in Asia. 1t Is a mys-
terry so %invincible that, once in a
mans blood, there is little choice left
him but to follow it's lure on and on,
seeking its source in that hinterland
still farther to the north. From the
Great Wall n 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
city between China and Inner Mon
6ollu-hNe lOuIS ~ lue uUTlIl VI
Picking 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 aravan route between Siberia
and China. Here all the wool and
skins from the North are unloaded.
Here Is quartered a Chinese garrison
against a Monaghan 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, IL the wayfarer be abroad in July.
Kalgan offers no inns and the foreign
er must beg friends among the scat
tering missionaries or claim the hos
pitality of the British-American 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 a ARE deliciousness.
You may ride into Mongolia as a
free lance on horseback if you are not
a 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
sleep in a Mongol tent-you must be
consigned to a caravan OF a litter.
Our equlpages were least picturesque
of all the choices-a small caravan of
Peking carts drawn not by camels,
which are among the possibilities, but
BY horses and mules with a 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 GO days to
Irkutsk-in dry months a bowlder-
strewn highway, in rainy months the
beu of a torrent which rushes down
between the bluffs, carrying men and
Iuckless caravan before 1t. 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. 1t Is a of desert
coloring as Is the desert sun, white hot.
But there is a charm in that Pickering
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 "tifin" 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 a court,
also mud-walled, the entrance shaded
by a wide-spreading plane tree. From
the lower branches of the plane tree
hung a bird-cage; beneath it, carriers
and coolies and hawkers Of thrushes,
peddlers and camel-drivers sprawled
or lounged or squatted and smoked,
the blue of Chinese garments lying
exqulsitely cool against the bronze of
Chinese skins in the chiaroscuro of
shadow, sharply demarked from the
glare of the road. It stirred q strange
emotion in me; perhaps an early race.
memory, an ancient nostalgia for this
first home of the human race. But
there was no water for our beasts, and
we must travel two II farther-two.
thirds of an English mile. There, In
the shadow Of a doorway, we ate our
first trail tifin surrounded by half
clothed men and not in the least
cJotha1 cbiIdrou who fnlInupd ua on.