2 ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



Not even in the railway, when I was being borne 

 toward Kalgan and saw lines of laden camels plodding 

 silently along the paved road beside the train, or when 

 we puffed slowly through the famous Nankou Pass and 

 I saw that wonder of the world, the Great Wall, 

 winding like a gray serpent over ridge after ridge of the 

 mountains, was my dream-picture of mysterious Mon- 

 golia dispelled. I had seen all this before, and had ac- 

 cepted it as one accepts the motor cars beside the splen- 

 did walls of old Peking. It was too near, and the 

 railroad had made it commonplace. 



But Mongolia! That was different. One could not 

 go there in a roaring train. I had beside me the same 

 old rifle and sleeping bag that had been carried across 

 the mountains of far Yiin-nan, along the Tibetan fron- 

 tier, and through the fever-stricken jungles of Burma. 

 Somehow, these companions of forest and mountain 

 trails, and my reception at Kalgan by two khaki-clad 

 young men, each with a belt of cartridges and a six- 

 shooter strapped about his waist, did much to keep me 

 in a blissful state of unpreparedness for the destruction 

 of my dream-castles. 



That night as we sat in Mr. Charles Coltman's home, 

 with his charming wife, a real woman of the great out- 

 doors, presiding at the dinner table, the talk was all 

 of shooting, horses, and the vast, lone spaces of the Gobi 

 Desert — ^but not much of motor cars. Perhaps they 

 vaguely realized that I was still asleep in an unreal 

 world and knew that the awakening would come all 

 too soon. 



