in the heart of asia lies the enormous, mysterious and rich countryof mongolia. from somewhere on the snowy slopes of the tian shanand from the hot sands of western zungaria to the timbered ridgesof the sayan and to the great wall of china it stretches over ahuge portion of central asia. the cradle of peoples, histories andlegends; the native land of bloody conquerors, who have left heretheir capitals covered by the sand of the gobi, their mysteriousrings and their ancient nomad laws; the states of monks and evildevils, the country of wandering tribes administered by thedescendants of jenghiz khan and kublai khan--khans and princes ofthe junior lines: that is mongolia.
mysterious country of the cults of rama, sakkia-mouni, djonkapa andpaspa, cults guarded by the very person of the living buddha--buddha incarnated in the third dignitary of the lamaite religion--bogdo gheghen in ta kure or urga; the land of mysterious doctors,prophets, sorcerers, fortune-tellers and witches; the land of thesign of the swastika; the land which has not forgotten the thoughtsof the long deceased great potentates of asia and of half ofeurope: that is mongolia.
the land of nude mountains, of plains burned by the sun and killedby the cold, of ill cattle and ill people; the nest of pests,anthrax and smallpox; the land of boiling hot springs and ofmountain passes inhabited by demons; of sacred lakes swarming withfish; of wolves, rare species of deer and mountain goats, marmotsin millions, wild horses, wild donkeys and wild camels that havenever known the bridle, ferocious dogs and rapacious birds of preywhich devour the dead bodies cast out on the plains by the people:
that is mongolia.
the land whose disappearing primitive people gaze upon the bones oftheir forefathers whitening in the sands and dust of their plains;where are dying out the people who formerly conquered china, siam,northern india and russia and broke their chests against the ironlances of the polish knights, defending then all the christianworld against the invasion of wild and wandering asia: that ismongolia.
the land swelling with natural riches, producing nothing, in needof everything, destitute and suffering from the world's cataclysm:
that is mongolia.
in this land, by order of fate, after my unsuccessful attempt toreach the indian ocean through tibet, i spent half a year in thestruggle to live and to escape. my old and faithful friend and iwere compelled, willy-nilly, to participate in the exceedinglyimportant and dangerous events transpiring in mongolia in the yearof grace 1921. thanks to this, i came to know the calm, good andhonest mongolian people; i read their souls, saw their sufferingsand hopes; i witnessed the whole horror of their oppression andfear before the face of mystery, there where mystery pervades alllife. i watched the rivers during the severe cold break with arumbling roar their chains of ice; saw lakes cast up on theirshores the bones of human beings; heard unknown wild voices in themountain ravines; made out the fires over miry swamps of the will-o'-the-wisps; witnessed burning lakes; gazed upward to mountainswhose peaks could not be scaled; came across great balls ofwrithing snakes in the ditches in winter; met with streams whichare eternally frozen, rocks like petrified caravans of camels,horsemen and carts; and over all saw the barren mountains whosefolds looked like the mantle of satan, which the glow of theevening sun drenched with blood.
"look up there!" cried an old shepherd, pointing to the slope ofthe cursed zagastai. "that is no mountain. it is he who lies inhis red mantle and awaits the day when he will rise again to beginthe fight with the good spirits."and as he spoke i recalled the mystic picture of the noted paintervroubel. the same nude mountains with the violet and purple robesof satan, whose face is half covered by an approaching grey cloud.
mongolia is a terrible land of mystery and demons. therefore it isno wonder that here every violation of the ancient order of life ofthe wandering nomad tribes is transformed into streams of red bloodand horror, ministering to the demonic pleasure of satan couched onthe bare mountains and robed in the grey cloak of dejection andsadness, or in the purple mantle of war and vengeance.
after returning from the district of koko nor to mongolia andresting a few days at the narabanchi monastery, we went to live inuliassutai, the capital of western outer mongolia. it is the lastpurely mongolian town to the west. in mongolia there are but threepurely mongolian towns, urga, uliassutai and ulankom. the fourthtown, kobdo, has an essentially chinese character, being the centerof chinese administration in this district inhabited by thewandering tribes only nominally recognizing the influence of eitherpeking or urga. in uliassutai and ulankom, besides the unlawfulchinese commissioners and troops, there were stationed mongoliangovernors or "saits," appointed by the decree of the living buddha.
when we arrived in that town, we were at once in the sea ofpolitical passions. the mongols were protesting in great agitationagainst the chinese policy in their country; the chinese raged anddemanded from the mongolians the payment of taxes for the fullperiod since the autonomy of mongolia had been forcibly extractedfrom peking; russian colonists who had years before settled nearthe town and in the vicinity of the great monasteries or among thewandering tribes had separated into factions and were fightingagainst one another; from urga came the news of the struggle forthe maintenance of the independence of outer mongolia, led by therussian general, baron ungern von sternberg; russian officers andrefugees congregated in detachments, against which the chineseauthorities protested but which the mongols welcomed; thebolsheviki, worried by the formation of white detachments inmongolia, sent their troops to the borders of mongolia; fromirkutsk and chita to uliassutai and urga envoys were running fromthe bolsheviki to the chinese commissioners with various proposalsof all kinds; the chinese authorities in mongolia were graduallyentering into secret relations with the bolsheviki and in kiakhtaand ulankom delivered to them the russian refugees, thus violatingrecognized international law; in urga the bolsheviki set up arussian communistic municipality; russian consuls were inactive;red troops in the region of kosogol and the valley of the selengahad encounters with anti-bolshevik officers; the chineseauthorities established garrisons in the mongolian towns and sentpunitive expeditions into the country; and, to complete theconfusion, the chinese troops carried out house-to-house searches,during which they plundered and stole.
into what an atmosphere we had fallen after our hard and dangeroustrip along the yenisei, through urianhai, mongolia, the lands ofthe turguts, kansu and koko nor!
"do you know," said my old friend to me, "i prefer stranglingpartisans and fighting with the hunghutze to listening to news andmore anxious news!"he was right; for the worst of it was that in this bustle and whirlof facts, rumours and gossip the reds could approach troubleduliassutai and take everyone with their bare hands. we should verywillingly have left this town of uncertainties but we had no placeto go. in the north were the hostile partisans and red troops; tothe south we had already lost our companions and not a little ofour own blood; to the west raged the chinese administrators anddetachments; and to the east a war had broken out, the news ofwhich, in spite of the attempts of the chinese authorities atsecrecy, had filtered through and had testified to the seriousnessof the situation in this part of outer mongolia. consequently wehad no choice but to remain in uliassutai. here also were livingseveral polish soldiers who had escaped from the prison camps inrussia, two polish families and two american firms, all in the sameplight as ourselves. we joined together and made our ownintelligence department, very carefully watching the evolution ofevents. we succeeded in forming good connections with the chinesecommissioner and with the mongolian sait, which greatly helped usin our orientation.
what was behind all these events in mongolia? the very clevermongol sait of uliassutai gave me the following explanation.
"according to the agreements between mongolia, china and russia ofoctober 21, 1912, of october 23, 1913, and of june 7, 1915, outermongolia was accorded independence and the moral head of our'yellow faith,' his holiness the living buddha, became the suzerainof the mongolian people of khalkha or outer mongolia with the titleof 'bogdo djebtsung damba hutuktu khan.' while russia was stillstrong and carefully watched her policy in asia, the government ofpeking kept the treaty; but, when, at the beginning of the war withgermany, russia was compelled to withdraw her troops from siberia,peking began to claim the return of its lost rights in mongolia.
it was because of this that the first two treaties of 1912 and 1913were supplemented by the convention of 1915. however, in 1916,when all the forces of russia were pre-occupied in the unsuccessfulwar and afterwards when the first russian revolution broke out infebruary, 1917, overthrowing the romanoff dynasty, the chinesegovernment openly retook mongolia. they changed all the mongolianministers and saits, replacing them with individuals friendly tochina; arrested many mongolian autonomists and sent them to prisonin peking; set up their administration in urga and other mongoltowns; actually removed his holiness bogdo khan from the affairs ofadministration; made him only a machine for signing chinesedecrees; and at last introduced into mongolia their troops. fromthat moment there developed an energetic flow of chinese merchantsand coolies into mongolia. the chinese began to demand the paymentof taxes and dues from 1912. the mongolian population were rapidlystripped of their wealth and now in the vicinities of our towns andmonasteries you can see whole settlements of beggar mongols livingin dugouts. all our mongol arsenals and treasuries wererequisitioned. all monasteries were forced to pay taxes; allmongols working for the liberty of their country were persecuted;through bribery with chinese silver, orders and titles the chinesesecured a following among the poorer mongol princes. it is easy tounderstand how the governing class, his holiness, khans, princes,and high lamas, as well as the ruined and oppressed people,remembering that the mongol rulers had once held peking and chinain their hands and under their reign had given her the first placein asia, were definitely hostile to the chinese administratorsacting thus. insurrection was, however, impossible. we had noarms. all our leaders were under surveillance and every movementby them toward an armed resistance would have ended in the sameprison at peking where eighty of our nobles, princes and lamas diedfrom hunger and torture after a previous struggle for the libertyof mongolia. some abnormally strong shock was necessary to drivethe people into action. this was given by the chineseadministrators, general cheng yi and general chu chi-hsiang. theyannounced that his holiness bogdo khan was under arrest in his ownpalace, and they recalled to his attention the former decree of thepeking government--held by the mongols to be unwarranted andillegal--that his holiness was the last living buddha. this wasenough. immediately secret relations were made between the peopleand their living god, and plans were at once elaborated for theliberation of his holiness and for the struggle for liberty andfreedom of our people. we were helped by the great prince of theburiats, djam bolon, who began parleys with general ungern, thenengaged in fighting the bolsheviki in transbaikalia, and invitedhim to enter mongolia and help in the war against the chinese.
then our struggle for liberty began."thus the sait of uliassutai explained the situation to me.
afterwards i heard that baron ungern, who had agreed to fight forthe liberty of mongolia, directed that the mobilization of themongolians in the northern districts be forwarded at once andpromised to enter mongolia with his own small detachment, movingalong the river kerulen. afterwards he took up relations with theother russian detachment of colonel kazagrandi and, together withthe mobilized mongolian riders, began the attack on urga. twice hewas defeated but on the third of february, 1921, he succeeded incapturing the town and replaced the living buddha on the throne ofthe khans.
at the end of march, however, these events were still unknown inuliassutai. we knew neither of the fall of urga nor of thedestruction of the chinese army of nearly 15,000 in the battles ofmaimachen on the shore of the tola and on the roads between urgaand ude. the chinese carefully concealed the truth by preventinganybody from passing westward from urga. however, rumours existedand troubled all. the atmosphere became more and more tense, whilethe relations between the chinese on the one side and themongolians and russians on the other became more and more strained.
at this time the chinese commissioner in uliassutai was wang tsao-tsun and his advisor, fu hsiang, both very young and inexperiencedmen. the chinese authorities had dismissed the uliassutai sait,the prominent mongolian patriot, prince chultun beyle, and hadappointed a lama prince friendly to china, the former vice-ministerof war in urga. oppression increased. the searching of russianofficers' and colonists' houses and quarters commenced, openrelations with the bolsheviki followed and arrest and beatingsbecame common. the russian officers formed a secret detachment ofsixty men so that they could defend themselves. however, in thisdetachment disagreements soon sprang up between lieutenant-colonelm. m. michailoff and some of his officers. it was evident that inthe decisive moment the detachment must separate into factions.
we foreigners in council decided to make a thorough reconnaissancein order to know whether there was danger of red troops arriving.
my old companion and i agreed to do this scouting. prince chultunbeyle gave us a very good guide--an old mongol named tzeren, whospoke and read russian perfectly. he was a very interestingpersonage, holding the position of interpreter with the mongolianauthorities and sometimes with the chinese commissioner. shortlybefore he had been sent as a special envoy to peking with veryimportant despatches and this incomparable horseman had made thejourney between uliassutai and peking, that is 1,800 miles, in ninedays, incredible as it may seem. he prepared himself for thejourney by binding all his abdomen and chest, legs, arms and neckwith strong cotton bandages to protect himself from the wracks andstrains of such a period in the saddle. in his cap he bore threeeagle feathers as a token that he had received orders to fly like abird. armed with a special document called a tzara, which gave himthe right to receive at all post stations the best horses, one toride and one fully saddled to lead as a change, together with twooulatchen or guards to accompany him and bring back the horses fromthe next station or ourton, he made the distance of from fifteen tothirty miles between stations at full gallop, stopping only longenough to have the horses and guards changed before he was offagain. ahead of him rode one oulatchen with the best horses toenable him to announce and prepare in advance the complement ofsteeds at the next station. each oulatchen had three horses inall, so that he could swing from one that had given out and releasehim to graze until his return to pick him up and lead or ride himback home. at every third ourton, without leaving his saddle, hereceived a cup of hot green tea with salt and continued his racesouthward. after seventeen or eighteen hours of such riding hestopped at the ourton for the night or what was left of it,devoured a leg of boiled mutton and slept. thus he ate once a dayand five times a day had tea; and so he traveled for nine days!
with this servant we moved out one cold winter morning in thedirection of kobdo, just over three hundred miles, because fromthere we had received the disquieting rumours that the red troopshad entered ulankom and that the chinese authorities had handedover to them all the europeans in the town. we crossed the riverdzaphin on the ice. it is a terrible stream. its bed is full ofquicksands, which in summer suck in numbers of camels, horses andmen. we entered a long, winding valley among the mountains coveredwith deep snow and here and there with groves of the black wood ofthe larch. about halfway to kobdo we came across the yurta of ashepherd on the shore of the small lake of baga nor, where eveningand a strong wind whirling gusts of snow in our faces easilypersuaded us to stop. by the yurta stood a splendid bay horse witha saddle richly ornamerited with silver and coral. as we turned infrom the road, two mongols left the yurta very hastily; one of themjumped into the saddle and quickly disappeared in the plain behindthe snowy hillocks. we clearly made out the flashing folds of hisyellow robe under the great outer coat and saw his large knifesheathed in a green leather scabbard and handled with horn andivory. the other man was the host of the yurta, the shepherd of alocal prince, novontziran. he gave signs of great pleasure atseeing us and receiving us in his yurta.
"who was the rider on the bay horse?" we asked.
he dropped his eyes and was silent.
"tell us," we insisted. "if you do not wish to speak his name, itmeans that you are dealing with a bad character.""no! no!" he remonstrated, flourishing his hands. "he is a good,great man; but the law does not permit me to speak his name."we at once understood that the man was either the chief of theshepherd or some high lama. consequently we did not further insistand began making our sleeping arrangements. our host set threelegs of mutton to boil for us, skillfully cutting out the boneswith his heavy knife. we chatted and learned that no one had seenred troops around this region but in kobdo and in ulankom thechinese soldiers were oppressing the population, and were beatingto death with the bamboo mongol men who were defending their womenagainst the ravages of these chinese troops. some of the mongolshad retreated to the mountains to join detachments under thecommand of kaigordoff, an altai tartar officer who was supplyingthem with weapons.