Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1918-02-22

TR HE wayfarer in China VINO
i 4 turns south to Angli cized Hong
kong, multitudinous Canton or
that vivid hybrid Of East and
West, Shanghai, fails even to brush
the strangest and most ancient mys-
terry Vf the dragon kingdom. That
mysi cry 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 turrets. writes
Olive Gilbreath in Asia. 1t Is mys-
terry so invincible that, once in a
mans blood there is little choice left
him but to follow its lure on and on,
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
i 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
| golia-five hours to the north of
| Picking as the Chinese train crawls.--
offers convenient point of departure
| into Mongolia. Kalgan, lying at the
foot Of the pass. marks the end Of the
ancient caravan route between Siberia
i and China. Here all the wool and
skins from the North are unloaded.
Here is CHARTERED 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-tha
| is, If 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 rare deliciousness.
You may ride into Mongolia as a
free lance on horseback If you are not
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 raeat. and unwilling to
sleep in Mongol tent-you must be
consigned to a caravan or 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 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 InC nozQ &c QFHas
We are out of the city now on that
white road which crosses the plain for
60 days to Urga and for go days to
Irkutsk-in dry months a bowlder-
strewn highway, in rainy months the
bed of torrent which rushes down
between the bluffs, carrying men I'd
luckless caravans before it. The as
cent is gradual. almost imperceptible.
Mud villages c.ing lsmpet-wise to the
bluffs, the DOCS leading into only bur-
rows in the hillside. 1t is a of desert
coloring as is the desert SIN, white hot
But there is a charm IL that Pickering
monotonous road, like the charm of q
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 a 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. carriers
and coolies and hawkers Of thrushes
peddlers aad eamel-drivers sprawlet
or lounged or squatted and smoked
the blue of Chinese garments lyins
exquisitely cool against the bronze Of
Chinese skins in the chiaroscuro Of
. shadow, sharply demarked from tn,
glare of the road. 1t stirred strange
oYanf3nx, A., mo r.crhopS on oox1v N IA
memory, an ancient nostalgia for thil
first home Of the human race. Blu
there was no water for our beasts. anC
: we must travel two Ii farther~-two
thirds of an English mile. There. In
: the shadow OF doorway, we ate on
1 / Rre4 trail tfffln S,,rroundaf7 hv half