Beasts, Men and Gods [75]
maintaining that one must not trust only the reports of Domojiroff. When our conversation was finished, the Captain stood up and offered his apologies for detaining me in my journey. Afterwards he presented me a fine Mauser with silver mountings on the handle and said:
"Your pride greatly pleased me. I beg you to receive this weapon as a memento of me."
The following morning I set out anew from Zain Shabi, having in my pocket the laissez-passer of Bezrodnoff for his outposts.
CHAPTER XXXI
TRAVELING BY "URGA"
Once more we traveled along the now known places, the mountain from which I espied the detachment of Bezrodnoff, the stream into which I had thrown my weapon, and soon all this lay behind us. At the first ourton we were disappointed because we did not find horses there. In the yurtas were only the host with two of his sons. I showed him my document and he exclaimed:
"Noyon has the right of 'urga.' Horses will be brought very soon."
He jumped into his saddle, took two of my Mongols with him, providing them and himself with long thin poles, four or five metres in length, and fitted at the end with a loop of rope, and galloped away. My cart moved behind them. We left the road, crossed the plain for an hour and came upon a big herd of horses grazing there. The Mongol began to catch a quota of them for us with his pole and noose or urga, when out of the mountains nearby came galloping the owners of the herds. When the old Mongol showed my papers to them, they submissively acquiesced and substituted four of their men for those who had come with me thus far. In this manner the Mongols travel, not along the ourton or station road but directly from one herd to another, where the fresh horses are caught and saddled and the new owners substituted for those of the last herd. All the Mongols so effected by the right of urga try to finish their task as rapidly as possible and gallop like mad for the nearest herd in your general direction of travel to turn over their task to their neighbor. Any traveler having this right of urga can catch horses himself and, if there are no owners, can force the former ones to carry on and leave the animals in the next herd he requisitions. But this happens very rarely because the Mongol never likes to seek out his animals in another's herd, as it always gives so many chances for controversy.
It was from this custom, according to one explanation, that the town of Urga took its name among outsiders. By the Mongols themselves it is always referred to as Ta Kure, "The Great Monastery." The reason the Buriats and Russians, who were the first to trade into this region, called it Urga was because it was the principal destination of all the trading expeditions which crossed the plains by this old method or right of travel. A second explanation is that the town lies in a "loop" whose sides are formed by three mountain ridges, along one of which the River Tola runs like the pole or stick of the familiar urga of the plains.
Thanks to this unique ticket of urga I crossed quite untraveled sections of Mongolia for about two hundred miles. It gave me the welcome opportunity to observe the fauna of this part of the country. I saw many huge herds of Mongolian antelopes running from five to six thousand, many groups of bighorns, wapiti and kabarga antelopes. Sometimes small herds of wild horses and wild asses flashed as a vision on the horizon.
In one place I observed a big colony of marmots. All over an area of several square miles their mounds were scattered with the holes leading down to their runways below, the dwellings of the marmot. In and out among these mounds the greyish-yellow or brown animals ran in all sizes up to half that of an average dog. They ran heavily and the skin on their fat bodies moved as though it were too big for them. The marmots are splendid prospectors, always digging deep ditches, throwing out on the surface all the stones. In many places I saw mounds the marmots had made from copper ore and farther north some from minerals containing
"Your pride greatly pleased me. I beg you to receive this weapon as a memento of me."
The following morning I set out anew from Zain Shabi, having in my pocket the laissez-passer of Bezrodnoff for his outposts.
CHAPTER XXXI
TRAVELING BY "URGA"
Once more we traveled along the now known places, the mountain from which I espied the detachment of Bezrodnoff, the stream into which I had thrown my weapon, and soon all this lay behind us. At the first ourton we were disappointed because we did not find horses there. In the yurtas were only the host with two of his sons. I showed him my document and he exclaimed:
"Noyon has the right of 'urga.' Horses will be brought very soon."
He jumped into his saddle, took two of my Mongols with him, providing them and himself with long thin poles, four or five metres in length, and fitted at the end with a loop of rope, and galloped away. My cart moved behind them. We left the road, crossed the plain for an hour and came upon a big herd of horses grazing there. The Mongol began to catch a quota of them for us with his pole and noose or urga, when out of the mountains nearby came galloping the owners of the herds. When the old Mongol showed my papers to them, they submissively acquiesced and substituted four of their men for those who had come with me thus far. In this manner the Mongols travel, not along the ourton or station road but directly from one herd to another, where the fresh horses are caught and saddled and the new owners substituted for those of the last herd. All the Mongols so effected by the right of urga try to finish their task as rapidly as possible and gallop like mad for the nearest herd in your general direction of travel to turn over their task to their neighbor. Any traveler having this right of urga can catch horses himself and, if there are no owners, can force the former ones to carry on and leave the animals in the next herd he requisitions. But this happens very rarely because the Mongol never likes to seek out his animals in another's herd, as it always gives so many chances for controversy.
It was from this custom, according to one explanation, that the town of Urga took its name among outsiders. By the Mongols themselves it is always referred to as Ta Kure, "The Great Monastery." The reason the Buriats and Russians, who were the first to trade into this region, called it Urga was because it was the principal destination of all the trading expeditions which crossed the plains by this old method or right of travel. A second explanation is that the town lies in a "loop" whose sides are formed by three mountain ridges, along one of which the River Tola runs like the pole or stick of the familiar urga of the plains.
Thanks to this unique ticket of urga I crossed quite untraveled sections of Mongolia for about two hundred miles. It gave me the welcome opportunity to observe the fauna of this part of the country. I saw many huge herds of Mongolian antelopes running from five to six thousand, many groups of bighorns, wapiti and kabarga antelopes. Sometimes small herds of wild horses and wild asses flashed as a vision on the horizon.
In one place I observed a big colony of marmots. All over an area of several square miles their mounds were scattered with the holes leading down to their runways below, the dwellings of the marmot. In and out among these mounds the greyish-yellow or brown animals ran in all sizes up to half that of an average dog. They ran heavily and the skin on their fat bodies moved as though it were too big for them. The marmots are splendid prospectors, always digging deep ditches, throwing out on the surface all the stones. In many places I saw mounds the marmots had made from copper ore and farther north some from minerals containing