236 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



China, near the Altai Range perform what to me 

 appeared miracles. He was an extraordinary man, with 

 something weird and hypnotic about him ; and it is 

 to hypnotic suggestion that I attribute some of his 

 tricks, for, though I stood close to him and watched 

 him narrowly, I could not detect the fraud, if fraud 

 there were. 



This Mongolian looked like a man a hundred and 

 fifty years old, his skin shrivelled with hundreds of 

 wrinkles ; his oblique eyes shining with a light which 

 seemed to come from within had a horrible and fasci- 

 nating stare, so that when he caught one's own he 

 seemed to hold them. He was dressed in an old yellow 

 tunic, embroidered with some cabalistic pattern worked 

 in red ; inside this a silk garment of the same shape, 

 which had once been scarlet. On his head was a 

 high Astrakhan hat, from under which long, snake- like 

 locks depended. He had a retinue of ten to fifteen 

 ragged-looking ruffians of Mongolian type carrying 

 various instruments of music, drums, and large conches. 

 A small boy, of five or six, was also of the party a 

 bright, merry little lad, quite out of harmony with his 

 strange companions. The conjurer's paraphernalia con- 

 sisted of a small araba (native cart) drawn by a wiry 

 Turkoman pony, carrying an open wicker-work basket 

 cage, divided into two compartments, in one of which 

 was a small tiger. A few pots and pans, all exposed 

 to view, some faggots of wood, and his own drinking- 

 bowl and rice-saucer completed the outfit. He stood, 

 with his cart, on a hard-beaten patch of ground used 

 by potters, with no more underground contrivances than 

 you would find under the asphalt of Trafalgar Square. 

 Before beginning his tricks he stripped, all save his 



