662 



EXPLORATIONS IN MONGOLIA AND TIBET. 



westerly winds, are coiitiuually filling up. We saw but few Mongols; 

 they live remote from the route, or when they have remained in their 

 former haunts, now settled by Chinese, have adopted Chinese modes of 

 dress and of living, and too frequently their vices. 



Some antelope, a few hares, and vast flocks of sand grouse {SyrrJiaptes 

 PallasU) were occasionally seen; but what a sportsman's paradise 

 these plains must have been in the days of K'ang-hsi, when Father 

 Gerbillon came here with him to hawk and shoot, and the great Em- 

 peror never failed to return to camj) with scores and scores of hares 

 and other game killed by his arrows! 



Father Hue has so fully and graphically described the Ordos country 

 that I will not venture to try and improve on what he has said, especially 

 as one forms a more agreeable opinion of the country from his narrative 

 than one would from what I might say of it. It has, I fear, changed 

 for the worse since his time. 



Fig. 2. — Baron gomba or Hsi Knng miao Lamaist Tcmi>k" in tho Ordos country. 



The only place of any importance we saw was the palace of one of 

 the Orat Mongol princes, the Hsi Kung or " Duke of the West," and 

 near it a small but very handsomely built lamasery, the temple itself of 

 pure Tibetan style. It is called by the Mongols, Baron gomba, and by 

 the Chinese, Hsi Kung miao. 



On the 9tli«©f January, I reached the large Chinese Christian com- 

 munity (some three hundred families residing in four villages) of San-tao 

 ho-tzu, created and managed by the Belgi^ Catholic foreign mis- 



