8 ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



splendid except for the deep ruts cut by mule- and ox- 

 carts. These carts are the despair of any one who hopes 

 some time to see good roads in China. The spike- 

 studded wheels cut into the hardest ground and leave a 

 chaos of ridges and chasms which grows worse with 

 every year. 



We were seldom out of sight of mud-waUed huts or 

 tiny Chinese villages, and Chinese peddlers passed our 

 cars, carrying baskets of fruit or trinkets for the women. 

 Chinese farmers stopped to gaze at us as we bounded 

 over the ruts — in fact it was all Chinese, although we 

 were really in Mongolia. I was very eager to see Mon- 

 gols, to register first impressions of a people of whom 

 I had dreamed so much ; but the blue-clad Chinaman was 

 ubiquitous. 



For seventy miles from Kalgan it was all the same — 

 Chinese everywhere. The Great Wall was built to keep 

 the Mongols out, and by the same token it should have 

 kept the Chinese in. But the rolling, grassy sea of the 

 vast plateau was too strong a temptation for the Chinese 

 farmer. Encouraged by his own government, which 

 knows the value of just such peaceful penetration, he 

 pushes forward the line of cultivation a dozen miles or 

 so every year. As a result the grassy hills have given 

 place to fields of wheat, oats, millet, buckwheat, and 

 potatoes. 



The Mongol, above all things, is not a farmer; pos- 

 sibly because, many years ago, the Manchus forbade him 

 to till the soil. Moreover, on the ground he is as awk- 

 ward as a duck out of water and he is never comfortable. 



