A JOURNEY IN SIBERIA. 403 



by storm and tempest, cried aloud to heaven. When we visited 

 these villages, the tragedy of bygone days was appallingly clear. 

 Between the crumbling walls, whose roofs had been burnt and 

 whose gables had wholly or partially fallen in, on the mouldering 

 rubbish over which poisonous fungi ran riot, amid remnants of 

 Chinese porcelain, and half -charred and thus preserved plenishings, 

 we came everywhere on human remains, crumbling skulls, bones 

 broken by the teeth of carnivores, and certain parts of the skeletons 

 of domesticated animals, especially of the dog. The skulls still bore 

 traces of the heavy blows which shattered them. The inhabitants 

 had fallen before the rage of their murderous foes, and the dogs had 

 shared the fate of their masters whom they may have been trying 

 to protect; the other domestic animals had been driven away, 

 plundered like the rest of the useful property, and the apparently 

 useless residue had been broken up and burnt. Only two semi- 

 domesticated animals remain, the swallow and the sparrow; the rest 

 are replaced by ruin-loving birds. 



We passed cheerlessly through the desolate valley. Not one of 

 the Dungani was to be seen, for behind our thirty Cossacks was the 

 great power of Russia. The first human beings we came across 

 were Russian Kirghiz, who, though in Chinese territory, were 

 pasturing their flocks and tilling their fields as usual, and had even 

 erected a monument to one of their dead. 



From the valley of the Emil we crossed the Tarabagatai by 

 one of the lowest passes of the range, and thence descended to 

 the almost flat plateau of Tchilikti, which lies over five thousand 

 feet above the sea, surrounded by the Tarabagatai, Zaur, Manrak, 

 Terserik, Mustau, and Urkashar. Crossing the plateau, passing some 

 enormously large Kurgans or sepulchral mounds of the natives, we 

 followed the serpentine valleys of the infinitely irregular Manrak 

 mountains in order to reach the plain of Zaizan and the delightful 

 town of the same name which had been erected as an outpost some 

 four years previously. Here, close to the Chinese-Russian boundary, 

 we found European comfort and civilization for the first time since 

 leaving Lepsa. In the society which we enjoyed we seemed to be 

 back again in St. Petersburg or Berlin. There was talking, playing, 



