In the old days many came to pray to the smiling Buddha. The drivers of the tea-caravans from far-off China left their offerings of fruit and silk scarves. The herdsmen whose lambs had lived well through a bitter winter gave sheep fat of tail to the two yellow-robed priests who chanted and clashed the cymbals through the long days and into the nights. The little boys dedicated to the gods, shaven-headed, rosy-faced, crooned their lessons in the Tibetan tongue, sitting on the floor of the big blue school-gir beside the shrine. Every day pilgrims on their way to Urga stopped to pray in the _soumé_, and filled the tent of the young guardian with eatings of noodle-soup and drinkings of tea, with gossip and with song. But all is changed now in his little hut. The rule of non-marriage he keeps in the spirit, where so many lamas observe it only in the morganatic letter. This has left him alone in his old age, and pitifully solitary now that even the dwindling camel-trains, of whose tea-traffic the Manchurian Railway has robbed them, pass by no more. The priest is unfed even by pilgrims. These have gone with the rest to the routes of a better prosperity. Archir has seethed his evening meal of sheep-meat and flat pieces of dough. He has let the fire die down to embers, and has pulled the covering over the round hole. The freezing winds very soon make his hut so cold that one feels like a thin shaking uncovered creature even beneath the heaped furs. One’s ungloved hands grow numb as he lies by the brazier. In the morning we too depart, and like the Roman legionary beside the Vesuvian gate of Pompeii, the old priest waits, alone, unquestioning, uncomplaining, till a greater God than he of the _soumé_ shall send the summons of relief. * * * * * The mountain-ranges, one after another, stretch their towering barriers across the path. They trend northeast and southwest, as in Siberia. First comes the Sharan Daba, the white range, whose pass leads down to the Iro River, rich in alluvial gold. The streams flow westward into the Cellinga, whose waters empty into Lake Baikal, and thence by the Angara River, into the far-off Arctic Ocean. Ridge follows ridge now, and valley follows valley,--narrow cuts, with shallow streams, and huts clustered upon their sides. Out from the almost deserted borderland, the Mongol encampments are not unfrequently pitched where there is water for the flocks. If any wood be near by, it is well, since then the dried dung can be reserved for the smokeless evening fire when the top hole is closed.