SPORT AND SCIENCE ON THE 



hours to do the four miles to the top of the pass, 

 by which time the animals needed a good rest, 

 so once more we put up with a short day's run 

 and decided to spend the night at a farm-inn 

 named Huang-hua-p'ing. 



On July 17 we made an early start, but heavy 

 rains during the night had rendered the roads 

 well nigh impassable, so that progress was very 

 slow. We now headed in a northerly direction for 

 a few miles, traversing low, rolling grasslands, 

 cultivated here and there by Chinese settlers, 

 whose farms could be seen dotted over the land- 

 scape. Several small lagoons were passed, whereon 

 sheld-ducks and other water-fowl were plentiful. 

 By nightfall we had done sixty li (about 25 miles), 

 and put up at a small inn named Ts'a-han-k'u-luan. 

 It must be stated that the li of the Mongolian 

 Plateau are very much longer than those within 

 the Great Wall. Sixty Mongolian li might 

 be taken as the equivalent of eighty or ninety 

 Chinese li. As far as we could make out the 

 Mongolians themselves have no such standard 

 of measurement, but measure distance by the 

 time it takes a pony to do it, and reduce that to 

 h. Thus in spring when the grass-fed ponies 

 are lean and exhausted after the long winter, the 

 distance in li between two places will be considered 

 double or treble what it would be in the autumn 

 when the ponies are fat and vigorous after a 

 summer's rich feeding. It was some time before 



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