CHAPTER XII 



NOMADS OF THE FOREST 



Three days after the field meet we left with Tserin 

 Dorchy and two other Mongols for a wapiti hunt. We 

 rode along the Terelche River for three miles, some- 

 times splashing through the soggy edges of a marsh, and 

 again halfway up a hillside where the ground was firm 

 and hard; then, turning west on a mountain slope, we 

 came to a low plateau which rolled away in undulating 

 sweeps of hush-land between the edges of the dark pine 

 woods. It was a truly boreal landscape ; we were on the 

 edge of the forest, which stretches in a vast, rolling sea 

 of green far beyond the Siberian frontier. 



From the summit of the table-land we descended be- 

 tween dark walls of pine trees to a beautiful valley filled 

 with parklike openings. Just at dark Tserin Dorchy 

 turned abruptly into the stream and crossed to a pretty 

 grove of spruces on a little island formed by two 

 branches of the river. It was as secluded as a cavern, 

 and made an ideal place in which to camp. A hundred 

 feet away the tent was invisible and, save for the tiny 

 wreaths of smoke which curled above the tree-tops, 

 there was no sign of our presence there. 



After dinner Tserin Dorchy shouldered a pack of 

 skins and went to a "salt lick" in a meadow west of camp 



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