THE PASSING OF MONGOLIAN MYSTERY 181 



badly needs organization to make it entirely safe and 

 comfortable, still it has been effective even in its crude 

 form. 



At the present time a great part of the business 

 which is done with the Mongols is by barter. The Chi- 

 nese merchants extend credit to the natives for material 

 which they require and accept in return cattle, horses, 

 hides, wool, etc., to be paid at the proper season. In 

 recent years Russian paper rubles and Chinese silver 

 have been the currency of the country, but since the war 

 Russian money has so depreciated that it is now prac- 

 tically valueless. Mongolia greatly needs banking fa- 

 cilities and under the new political conditions undoubt- 

 edly these will be materially increased. 



A great source of wealth to Mongolia lies in her mag- 

 nificent forests of pine, spruce, larch and birch which 

 stretch away in an almost unbroken line of green to far 

 beyond the Siberian frontier. As yet but small inroads 

 have been made upon these forests, and as I stood one 

 afternoon upon the summit of a mountain gazing over 

 the miles of timbered hills below me, it seemed as though 

 here at least was an inexhaustible supply of splendid 

 lumber. But no more pernicious term was ever coined 

 than "inexhaustible supply!" I wondered, as I watched 

 the sun drop into the somber masses of the forest, how 

 long these splendid hills would remain inviolate. Cer- 

 tainly not many years after the Gobi Desert has been 

 crossed by lines of steel, and railroad sheds have re- 

 placed the gold-roofed temples of sacred Urga. 



We are at the very beginning of the days of flying, 



