SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER 
waste of sand, that ‘‘ Never-never country.”? The 
romance of those wild Tartars, living their lives 
of untrammelled freedom always appealed to my 
imagination and I longed to go and see it all. 
At last the chance came, and never shall I 
regret the step that once and for all settled my 
destiny, when I exchanged a town life of com- 
parative ease for that of the explorer and col- 
lector. 
It was in Tientsin in the summer of 1907 that 
I first met Mr. Malcolm. P. Anderson, who was 
out in the East collecting mammals and specimens 
of zoological interest generally for the British 
Museum at South Kensington, in connexion 
with the Duke of Bedford’s Exploration of Eastern 
Asia, 
At the time I was engaged in mounting the 
fruits of a hunting and collecting trip in Western 
Shansi for a local museum. 
With common interests a friendship sprang up 
between us, which culminated a month or'so later 
in a decision to join forces in carrying out an 
expedition into the hitherto practically unknown 
Ordos Desert. 
As I would not be free till the end of the year 
Anderson went to T’ai-yiian Fu in Shansi, where 
he continued to collect, till, everything having 
been arranged satisfactorily, I joined him towards 
the end of January 1908. 
The proximity of the Chinese New Year pre- 
5 
