450 SOUTHERN DZUNGARIA 



enough to realize a handsome profit on all they sell. 

 The rate is rather high, for even on the easy road from 

 Guchen to Kulja the rate is 15 tael per camel-load, and 

 the distance is about one-third of the journey from 

 Pekin to Guchen. 



Time, of course, is no object ; the caravans move at 

 the rate easiest for the camels ; they travel continuously 

 over the barren, fodderless region, stopping to feed and 

 to recuperate when they reach a locality with ample 

 food and water. Any time between six months and a year 

 may be occupied with the journey ; this depending on 

 the quantity of fodder the desert produces at the season 

 they make the passage, — if there is little food they move 

 more slowly, — and on whether they decide to take a 

 direct line from the Hoang Ho to Guchen or to call en route 

 at Uliassutai and Kobdo in Northern Mongolia. The 

 reason is obvious for using the trans-Mongolian route 

 for the transport of heavy goods. Large caravans can 

 find nourishment, no cost is entailed on account of food, 

 the track is level, crosses no mountain-ranges, is not 

 encumbered with other traffic, and does not pass through 

 towns where delay or expense can be incurred. 



Chinese officials, when in haste to return to Pekin, 

 sometimes travel by this northern route in preference 

 to the southern. By using carts drawn by camels, they 

 can make the entire distance between Guchen and Kho- 

 Kho-Koto in fifty days. The discomfort of the desert 

 journey forbids all except those in great haste to take 

 this line, the eight months spent in loitering along the 

 southern road being much more after the heart of the 

 Celestial. It proves, however, that there is a good, 

 hard, direct route suitable for wheeled-traffic between 

 Sin-Kiang and the capital of the Empire, practicable 



