THE SACRED CITY OF THE LIVING BUDDHA 81 



wooden boxes, four feet long by two and one-half feet 

 high. These coffins are the prisoners' cells. 



Some of the poor wretches have heavy chains about 

 their necks and both hands manacled together. They 

 can neither sit erect nor lie at full length. Their food, 

 when the jailer remembers to give them any, is pushed 

 through a six-inch hole in the coffin's side. Some are 

 imprisoned here for only a few days or weeks; others 

 for life, or for many years. Sometimes they lose the 

 use of their limbs, which shrink and shrivel away. The 

 agony of their cramped position is beyond the power of 

 words to describe. Even in winter, when the tempera- 

 ture drops, as it sometimes does, to sixty degrees below 

 zero, they are given only a single sheepskin for covering. 

 How it is possible to live in indescribable filth, half-fed, 

 well-nigh frozen in winter, and suffering the tortures of 

 the damned, is beyond my ken only a Mongol could 

 live at all. 



The prison is not a Mongol invention. It was built 

 by the Manchus and is an eloquent tribute to a knowl- 

 edge of the fine arts of cruelty that has never been sur- 

 passed. 



I have given this description of the prison not to feed 

 morbid curiosity, but to show that Urga, even if it has 

 a Custom House, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, motor 

 cars, and telephones, is still at heart a city of the Middle 

 Ages. 



In Urga we made a delightful and most valuable 

 friend in the person of Mr. F. A. Larsen. Most for- 

 eigners speak of him as "Larsen of Mongolia" and in- 



