Kiakhta is a hamlet of no importance apart from the trade. The frontier here is marked by a row of granite columns; a stockade separates it from Maimai chin. Pumpelly says: “One can hardly imagine a sharper line than is here drawn. On the one side of the stockade wall, the houses, churches, and people are European, on the other, Chinese. With one step the traveller passes really from Asia and Asiatic customs and language, into a refined European society.” The goods pay duty at the Russian _douane_ in a suburb of fifty houses, near Kiakhta. The Chinese town is also a small place, numbering between twelve and fifteen hundred men (no women being allowed in the settlement) who lived in idleness most of the year. This curious hamlet has two principal streets crossing at right angles, and gates at the four ends, in the wooden wall which surrounds it. These streets are badly paved, while their narrowness barely allows the passage of two camels abreast. The one-storied houses are constructed of wood, roofed with turf or boards, and consist of two small rooms, one used as a shop and the other as a bedroom. The windows in the rear apartment are made of oiled paper or mica, but the door is the only opening in the shop. The dwellings are kept clean, the furniture is of a superior description, and considerable taste and show are seen in displaying the goods. The traders live luxuriously, and attract a great crowd there during the fair in February, when the goods are exchanged. They are under the control of a Manchu, called the _dzarguchí_, who is appointed for three years, and superintends the police of the settlement as well as the commercial proceedings. There are two Buddhist temples here served by lamas, and containing five colossal images sitting cross-legged, and numerous smaller idols.[109] The western portion of Mongolia, between the meridians of 84° and 96° E., extending from near the western extremity of Kansuh province to the confines of Russia, comprising Uliasutai and its dependencies, Cobdo, and the Kalkas and Tourgouths of the Tangnu Mountains, is less known than any other part of it. The residence of the superintending officer of this province is at Uliasutai (_i.e._, ‘Poplar Grove’), a town lying northwest of the Selenga, in the khanate of Sainnoin, in a well cultivated and pleasant valley. ~THE PROVINCE OF COBDO.~