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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by Eugene Lee Stewart 



MONGOLIAN SCHOOLMASTERS 



The man on the right is Mr. Gobel. He has had four years of 

 college at Peking, speaks Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian fluently 

 and quite a bit of English. He is principal of the Mongolian 

 school at Hailar and lias seventy boys learning Chinese and Mon- 

 golian and studying geography, history, reading, and writing from 

 Chinese text-books. His assistant (at the left) studied at Tsitsihar, 

 in Manchuria. 



the lilies of the field, "they toil not, 

 neither do they spin." They are a shin- 

 ing example of how men by reducing 

 their needs reduce their anxieties. 



Financial crises cannot affect them, for 

 money as a medium of exchange is little 

 used on the plains, where brick tea has 

 more value than minted dollars. Mimic- 



carried the sil 



ipal affairs do not con- 

 cern them, for they build 

 no cities, leading a mi- 

 gratory, care- free exist- 

 ence. They need no 

 roads: the illimitable 

 steppe is a natural high- 

 way where nations can 

 pass without crowding. 

 They require little water : 

 in their climate men can- 

 not wash. They want no 

 electricity : at sundown, 

 after a long day in the 

 saddle, they are ready to 

 lie down and sleep. 

 Finally, the increasing 

 cost of living does not 

 trouble them, since it 

 costs them nothing to live 

 except the care required 

 to guard their herds from 

 wolves. 



These herds provide 

 them with clothing, with 

 food, with transport, 

 with fuel even. All over 

 the grass-lands the flocks 

 graze freely, watched by 

 men unchanged since the 

 days of the Great Gen- 

 ghiz. 



Living an easy, open 

 life — a life of true lib- 

 erty, remote from courts 

 of justice and police — 

 the Children of the Wil- 

 derness willingly abide 

 by his ancient code of 

 laws, simple, logical, hu- 

 mane , and admirably 

 suited to their nomadic 

 habits. Their lumbering 

 ox-carts were designed 

 in his day ; their sheep 

 and horses are the origi- 

 nal native breeds ; the an- 

 cestors of their camels 

 :en tents of the Conqueror. 



SHIPS OI' TII1C BURNING SANDS GAMBOL 

 IN TIII<: SNOW IN MONGOLIA 



Mongolian camels are superb beasts, 

 very different from the ugly, flea-bitten, 

 one-humped Arabian variety. In all the 

 glory of their winter coats — for, strange 



