220 KULJA. 



other gateways into the land of old Cathay, which 

 hold out greater attractions than does the road 

 through Kulja. Mongolia is, no doubt, for the most 

 part, a land of singular unattractiveness ; but the 

 shortest and most direct and most practicable route 

 from Russia to Peking lies across the level stretches 

 of the Gobi Desert. Urga, the most important town 

 in all Mongolia, is dominated by and permeated by the 

 leavening Russian yeast, and plans and surveys have 

 been made for a line from the Siberian railway to 

 Peking via Kiachta, Urga, and Kalgan.^ To the 

 south, again, the mystery - enshrouded highlands of 

 Tibet hold out irresistible inducements to international 

 flirtation and intrigue, and evidence has been suffici- 

 ently apparent of late that the Russian bear is by no 

 means insensible to the charms of coquetting with the 

 hierarch of the Mecca of Central Asian Buddhism. 

 The mission from Tibet under the able guidance of the 

 Siberian Buriat Dorjieff, which arrived at Odessa in 

 October 1900, and was received by the Tsar himself at 

 Livadia a short time after, cannot be regarded as a 

 mere pleasure-trip, undertaken at the fancy of pleasure- 

 seeking officials ; nor are the subsequent Tibetan mission 

 to St Petersburg, bearing an autograph letter from the 

 supreme pontiff of Lhassa to the Tsar of Russia, or 

 the expedition of the Russianised Buriat, Professor 

 Tsybikoff, to the Tibetan capital, or the fact that rifles 

 bearing the stamp of the Russian Government factory 

 of Tula were found on the bodies of the Tibetans who 

 fell in the recent onslaught against the Indian political 



^ I was informed by a Russian oflScial that the construction of this line had 

 been decided on, the 850 miles through Mongolia from Kiachta to Kalgan 

 to be built by Russia, and the remaining section from Kalgan to Peking 

 by China. 



