The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1918-02-23
w~ayfarer in China who
turns south to Anglicized Hong
kong, multitudinous Canton or


turns south to Anglicized Hong
kong, multitudinous Canton or
that vivid hybrid of East and
West, Shanghai, fails even to brush
the strangest 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 i~mpenetrably 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 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 n%orthland, Kalgan, the border
city between China and Inner Mon
golia-fve hours to the north Of
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 caravan route between Siberia
and China. Here all the wool and
skins from the North are unloaded.
Here is q%uartered 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, If the wayfarer be abroad in July,
Kalgan offers no inns and the foreign
! err 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 rare de~liciousness.
You may ride into Mongolia as q
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 tC
sleep in a Mongol tent-you must be
consigned to a caravan or a litter
Our equipages were least picturesque
of all the choices-a small caravan OF
Picking 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 usua
!, blue Peking carts and padded witt
l sacks of grain and "rutaos' of bedding
covered with heavy mats, had beer
drawn up within the mud walls of thu
: compound long before the first streal
OF the July dawn.
On the Road tc Urga.
: We are out of the city now on tina
! white road which crosses the plain 70
> 80 days to Urga and for 60 days t
; Irkutsk-in dry months a bowldeI
strewn highway, in rainy months tn
e beu Of a torrent which rushes dow
between the bluffs, carrying men an,
Iuckless before it. The as
cent is gradual, almost imperceptible
= Mud villages cling limpet-wise to tn
bluffs, the doors leading into only bur
I rows in the hillside. 1t is a of deser
coloring as is the desert sun, white hot
But there is a charm in hat fickerin
m~onotonous road, like the charm of
e peasant melody, and the call of tn
trail is in the air-"over the world an
5 under the world"
q At "tifin" we came upon one of thos
q charming little genres to be seen o
ten on Eastern roadways. In the seen
/, were an inn, mud-walled, and a cour
also mud-walled, the entrance shade
a by a wide-spreading plane tree. Fro
the lower branches of the plane tire
hung a bird-cage; beneath it, carter
Il and coolies and hawkers of thrushe
peddlers and camel-drivers sprawle
II or lounged or squatted and smokes
the blue of Chinese garments lyiT
\ exquisitely cool against the bronze
Chinese skins in the ~chiaroscuro
shadow, sharply demarked from IL
glare of the road. 1t stirred a strani
emotion m me; perhaps an early rae
n memory, an ancient nostalgia for tn
first home of the human race. b
Ar there was no water for our beasts, ar
we must travel two Ii farther-tw
thirds Of an English mile. There,
"a the shadow of a doorway, we ate OF
first trail tifin surrounded by hal