At last, on March 2, I arrived at Peking, after 1237 days of travelling through Asia, and passed through one of the fine gates in the city walls (Plate XVIII.). MONGOLIA Between China in the south and Eastern Siberia on the north, stretches the immense region of inner Asia which is called Mongolia. The Chinese call it the "grass country," but very large parts of it are waterless desert, where drift-sand is piled up into dunes, and caravan routes and wells are far apart. The belt of desert, one of the largest in the world, is called by the Mongols Gobi, a word which in their language denotes desert. The Chinese call it Shamo, which signifies sandy desert. Mongolia is subject to China, and the Mongols' spiritual superior or pope is the Dalai Lama. They have also a number of Lama monasteries, and make yearly pilgrimages in large parties to Lhasa. An extraordinary proportion of the male population of the country devote themselves to a religious life and become monks. The Chinese are glad of it, for the peaceful cloister life causes the formerly savage and warlike Mongol hordes to forget their own strength. Services before the image of Buddha in the temple halls lead their thoughts in other directions, and they forget that their people once held the sceptre over almost all Asia and half Europe. They do not remember that their forefathers, the Golden Horde, forced their way seven hundred years ago through the Caucasus, levied tribute throughout Russia, and alarmed all the rest of the West. They have forgotten that their fathers conquered all the Middle Kingdom and digged in yellow earth the Grand Canal on which the junks of the Chinese still ply. The sword has rusted fast in its sheath, and the Mongolian chiefs, whom the Chinese call vassals or dependent princes, encamp peacefully on the steppes under their eight _bans_. The Mongols are nomads. They own large flocks of sheep and goats, and live on mutton, milk, butter, and cheese. Among their domestic animals are also the two-humped camel and a small, hardy, strongly built horse. Their life is a perpetual wandering. They move with their flocks from one steppe to another. If the herbage is dried up in a district, or all the pasture is eaten up, they put their tents on camels and set out to find better grazing. Their tents are exactly the same as those of the Kirghizes of the Pamir and the Kirghiz Steppe. They are shaped like haycocks, and consist of a framework of tough ribs covered with black felt. [Illustration: PLATE XVIII. GATE IN THE WALLS OF PEKING.]