134 ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



low-brown mass when they reached midstream. All 

 their dignity fled, and they became merely frightened 

 mountains of flesh amid a chaos of writhing necks and 

 wildly switching tails. 



But stranger still was a motor car standing on a 

 partly submerged island between two branches of the 

 torrent. We learned later that its owners had suc- 

 cessfully navigated the first stream and entered the sec- 

 ond. A flooded carburetor had resulted, and ere the 

 car was again in running order, the water had risen 

 sufficiently to maroon them on the island. 



My wife and I both lack the philosophical nature 

 of the Oriental, and it was a sore trial to camp within 

 rifle shot of Urga. But we did not dare leave our 

 carts, loaded with precious specimens, to the care of 

 servants and the curiosity of an ever increasing horde 

 of Mongols. 



For a well-nigh rainless month we had been hunting 

 upon the plains, while only one hundred and fifty miles 

 away Urga had had an almost daily deluge. In mid- 

 summer heavy rain-clouds roll southward to burst 

 against "God's Mountain," which rears its green-clad 

 summits five thousand feet above the valley. 1 Then it 

 is only a matter of hours before every streamlet be- 

 comes a swollen torrent. But they subside as quickly 

 as they rise, and the particular river which barred our 

 road had lost its menace before the sun had risen in a 

 cloudless morning sky. All the valley seemed in mo- 

 tion. We joined the motley throng of camels, carts, 

 and horsemen; and even the motor car coughed and 



