Jen-tzen-tung is a large and most picturesque town. A constant stream of Mongols flows in and out of it. They wear the most picturesque clothes, silks and velvets of deep orange and luminous sea-green, glowing like jewels. We ride into the town to buy provisions, fish mostly. The wines sold at the shops are all sham and horribly nasty. At the corner of one of the streets there is a professional wizard, dressed in black silk embroidered with silver moons, and wearing the conical cap that wizards always do wear. You ask a question, pay a small sum and shake coins out of a cup three times, and according as the coins make an odd or even figure, the wizard writes down a sign on a piece of paper, and then he tells you the answer to your question. The Chinese consult him before striking a bargain or setting out on a journey. I asked him whether I should get back all right? He answered that I could go home either by the East or the West, and that the West would be better, though I should meet with obstacles. He refused to prophesy for more than a hundred days ahead. In the evening, after dinner, we discussed politics and the Duma (that is to say the Duma as originally planned by the decree of August 6th). The doctor said that unless there were to be a constitution in Russia, he would emigrate abroad, as he did not choose that his children should be brought up in a country which was politically inferior to Turkey. He is hopeful about the Duma; he says Witte will be a national hero; and that a constitution is a foregone conclusion. Somebody said the peasants were hopeless. He hotly contested this, and said there was far more political sense among the peasants than among the rest of the population. He has had great experience of the peasants. _September 19th._