the following evening we arrived at khathyl, a small russiansettlement of ten scattered houses in the valley of the egingol oryaga, which here takes its waters from the kosogol half a mileabove the village. the kosogol is a huge alpine lake, deep andcold, eighty-five miles in length and from ten to thirty in width.
on the western shore live the darkhat soyots, who call it hubsugul,the mongols, kosogol. both the soyots and mongols consider this aterrible and sacred lake. it is very easy to understand thisprejudice because the lake lies in a region of present volcanicactivity, where in the summer on perfectly calm sunny days itsometimes lashes itself into great waves that are dangerous notonly to the native fishing boats but also to the large russianpassenger steamers that ply on the lake. in winter also itsometimes entirely breaks up its covering of ice and gives offgreat clouds of steam. evidently the bottom of the lake issporadically pierced by discharging hot springs or, perhaps, bystreams of lava. evidence of some great underground convulsionlike this is afforded by the mass of killed fish which at timesdams the outlet river in its shallow places. the lake isexceedingly rich in fish, chiefly varieties of trout and salmon,and is famous for its wonderful "white fish," which was previouslysent all over siberia and even down into manchuria so far asmoukden. it is fat and remarkably tender and produces fine caviar.
another variety in the lake is the white khayrus or trout, which inthe migration season, contrary to the customs of most fish, goesdown stream into the yaga, where it sometimes fills the river frombank to bank with swarms of backs breaking the surface of thewater. however, this fish is not caught, because it is infestedwith worms and is unfit for food. even cats and dogs will nottouch it. this is a very interesting phemonenon and was beinginvestigated and studied by professor dorogostaisky of theuniversity at irkutsk when the coming of the bolsheviki interruptedhis work.
in khathyl we found a panic. the russian detachment of colonelkazagrandi, after having twice defeated the bolsheviki and well onits march against irkutsk, was suddenly rendered impotent andscattered through internal strife among the officers. thebolsheviki took advantage of this situation, increased their forcesto one thousand men and began a forward movement to recover whatthey had lost, while the remnants of colonel kazagrandi'sdetachment were retreating on khathyl, where he determined to makehis last stand against the reds. the inhabitants were loadingtheir movable property with their families into carts and scurryingaway from the town, leaving all their cattle and horses towhomsoever should have the power to seize and hold them. one partyintended to hide in the dense larch forest and the mountain ravinesnot far away, while another party made southward for muren kure anduliassutai. the morning following our arrival the mongol officialreceived word that the red troops had outflanked colonelkazagrandi's men and were approaching khathyl. the mongol loadedhis documents and his servants on eleven camels and left his yamen.
our mongol guides, without ever saying a word to us, secretlyslipped off with him and left us without camels. our situationthus became desperate. we hastened to the colonists who had notyet got away to bargain with them for camels, but they hadpreviously, in anticipation of trouble, sent their herds to distantmongols and so could do nothing to help us. then we betookourselves to dr. v. g. gay, a veterinarian living in the town,famous throughout mongolia for his battle against rinderpest. helived here with his family and after being forced to give up hisgovernment work became a cattle dealer. he was a most interestingperson, clever and energetic, and the one who had been appointedunder the czarist regime to purchase all the meat supplies frommongolia for the russian army on the german front. he organized ahuge enterprise in mongolia but when the bolsheviki seized power in1917 he transferred his allegiance and began to work with them.
then in may, 1918, when the kolchak forces drove the bolsheviki outof siberia, he was arrested and taken for trial. however, he wasreleased because he was looked upon as the single individual toorganize this big mongolian enterprise and he handed to admiralkolchak all the supplies of meat and the silver formerly receivedfrom the soviet commissars. at this time gay had been serving asthe chief organizer and supplier of the forces of kazagrandi.
when we went to him, he at once suggested that we take the onlything left, some poor, broken-down horses which would be able tocarry us the sixty miles to muren kure, where we could securecamels to return to uliassutai. however, even these were beingkept some distance from the town so that we should have to spendthe night there, the night in which the red troops were expected toarrive. also we were much astonished to see that gay was remainingthere with his family right up to the time of the expected arrivalof the reds. the only others in the town were a few cossacks, whohad been ordered to stay behind to watch the movements of the redtroops. the night came. my friend and i were prepared either tofight or, in the last event, to commit suicide. we stayed in asmall house near the yaga, where some workmen were living who couldnot, and did not feel it necessary to, leave. they went up on ahill from which they could scan the whole country up to the rangefrom behind which the red detachment must appear. from thisvantage point in the forest one of the workmen came running in andcried out:
"woe, woe to us! the reds have arrived. a horseman is gallopingfast through the forest road. i called to him but he did notanswer me. it was dark but i knew the horse was a strange one.""do not babble so," said another of the workmen. "some mongol rodeby and you jumped to the conclusion that he was a red.""no, it was not a mongol," he replied. "the horse was shod. iheard the sound of iron shoes on the road. woe to us!""well," said my friend, "it seems that this is our finish. it is asilly way for it all to end."he was right. just then there was a knock at our door but it wasthat of the mongol bringing us three horses for our escape.
immediately we saddled them, packed the third beast with our tentand food and rode off at once to take leave of gay.
in his house we found the whole war council. two or threecolonists and several cossacks had galloped from the mountains andannounced that the red detachment was approaching khathyl but wouldremain for the night in the forest, where they were buildingcampfires. in fact, through the house windows we could see theglare of the fires. it seemed very strange that the enemy shouldawait the morning there in the forest when they were right on thevillage they wished to capture.
an armed cossack entered the room and announced that two armed menfrom the detachment were approaching. all the men in the roompricked up their ears. outside were heard the horses' hoofsfollowed by men's voices and a knock at the door.
"come in," said gay.
two young men entered, their moustaches and beards white and theircheeks blazing red from the cold. they were dressed in the commonsiberian overcoat with the big astrakhan caps, but they had noweapons. questions began. it developed that it was a detachmentof white peasants from the irkutsk and yakutsk districts who hadbeen fighting with the bolsheviki. they had been defeatedsomewhere in the vicinity of irkutsk and were now trying to make ajunction with kazagrandi. the leader of this band was a socialist,captain vassilieff, who had suffered much under the czar because ofhis tenets.
our troubles had vanished but we decided to start immediately tomuren kure, as we had gathered our information and were in a hurryto make our report. we started. on the road we overtook threecossacks who were going out to bring back the colonists who werefleeing to the south. we joined them and, dismounting, we all ledour horses over the ice. the yaga was mad. the subterraneanforces produced underneath the ice great heaving waves which with aswirling roar threw up and tore loose great sections of ice,breaking them into small blocks and sucking them under the unbrokendownstream field. cracks ran like snakes over the surface indifferent directions. one of the cossacks fell into one of thesebut we had just time to save him. he was forced by his ducking insuch extreme cold to turn back to khathyl. our horses slippedabout and fell several times. men and animals felt the presence ofdeath which hovered over them and momentarily threatened them withdestruction. at last we made the farther bank and continuedsouthward down the valley, glad to have left the geological andfigurative volcanoes behind us. ten miles farther on we came upwith the first party of refugees. they had spread a big tent andmade a fire inside, filling it with warmth and smoke. their campwas made beside the establishment of a large chinese trading house,where the owners refused to let the colonists come into their amplyspacious buildings, even though there were children, women andinvalids among the refugees. we spent but half an hour here. theroad as we continued was easy, save in places where the snow laydeep. we crossed the fairly high divide between the egingol andmuren. near the pass one very unexpected event occurred to us. wecrossed the mouth of a fairly wide valley whose upper end wascovered with a dense wood. near this wood we noticed two horsemen,evidently watching us. their manner of sitting in their saddlesand the character of their horses told us that they were notmongols. we began shouting and waving to them; but they did notanswer. out of the wood emerged a third and stopped to look at us.
we decided to interview them and, whipping up our horses, gallopedtoward them. when we were about one thousand yards from them, theyslipped from their saddles and opened on us with a running fire.
fortunately we rode a little apart and thus made a poor target forthem. we jumped off our horses, dropped prone on the ground andprepared to fight. however, we did not fire because we thought itmight be a mistake on their part, thinking that we were reds. theyshortly made off. their shots from the european rifles had givenus further proof that they were not mongols. we waited until theyhad disappeared into the woods and then went forward to investigatetheir tracks, which we found were those of shod horses, clearlycorroborating the earlier evidence that they were not mongols. whocould they have been? we never found out; yet what a differentrelationship they might have borne to our lives, had their shotsbeen true!
after we had passed over the divide, we met the russian colonist d.
a. teternikoff from muren kure, who invited us to stay in his houseand promised to secure camels for us from the lamas. the cold wasintense and heightened by a piercing wind. during the day we frozeto the bone but at night thawed and warmed up nicely by our tentstove. after two days we entered the valley of muren and from afarmade out the square of the kure with its chinese roofs and largered temples. nearby was a second square, the chinese and russiansettlement. two hours more brought us to the house of ourhospitable companion and his attractive young wife who feasted uswith a wonderful luncheon of tasty dishes. we spent five days atmuren waiting for the camels to be engaged. during this time manyrefugees arrived from khathyl because colonel kazagrandi wasgradually falling back upon the town. among others there were twocolonels, plavako and maklakoff, who had caused the disruption ofthe kazagrandi force. no sooner had the refugees appeared in murenkure than the mongolian officials announced that the chineseauthorities had ordered them to drive out all russian refugees.
"where can we go now in winter with women and children and no homesof our own?" asked the distraught refugees.
"that is of no moment to us," answered the mongolian officials.
"the chinese authorities are angry and have ordered us to drive youaway. we cannot help you at all."the refugees had to leave muren kure and so erected their tents inthe open not far away. plavako and maklakoff bought horses andstarted out for van kure. long afterwards i learned that both hadbeen killed by the chinese along the road.
we secured three camels and started out with a large group ofchinese merchants and russian refugees to make uliassutai,preserving the warmest recollections of our courteous hosts, t. v.
and d. a. teternikoff. for the trip we had to pay for our camelsthe very high price of 33 lan of the silver bullion which had beensupplied us by an american firm in uliassutai, the equivalentroughly of 2.7 pounds of the white metal.