For a dozen versts he rides along on his pony beside us, chattering and laughing. When, after a devious trail, the pass is in sight, he starts off, and will not, at first, accept any present for his trouble. Valley follows valley now, the trail fairly well defined. Mongol huts give a chance for rest and for cooking. A welcome is bidden us in each, the nearest water is shown, and invitations to come back are freely extended. There is now one last range to cross, the Tologoytou, highest and steepest of all. Even the mounted Mongols, who have caught up with our toiling tarantass, swing off and climb afoot. Trees are on either hand, and the white wall-like face of the barrier passed in the morning seems a bare verst away. There comes a whole slope of boulders and rocks, jagged and broken, like the moraine of a glacier. And then, at long last, we reach the high-heaped Borisan at the summit, with its fluttering prayer-flags. The foremost Mongol throws on a rock, leaps upon his pony, and rides twice around the mound. “_Argila! argila!_” (bridles free! bridles free!) he cries, and trots down behind the crest. We, too, throw on a stone, and take the steep descent. Beyond the low rolling ridges below is the white of the Holy Mountain, topped with green foliage. Here one may not kill the thronging hare and deer and pheasants. As we gallop down, the _obos_, the white memorial monuments, take shape from the snow. In the dark-gray dimness of the city beyond, green and gold roofs become distinct, lighted by the last glow of the sinking sun. Huts cluster close now along the road, and the shadows of innumerable dogs pass and mingle and pass again, where the gray mud walls and houses begin to be continuous. In the dim twilight the tarantass thunders into the great wide way which ends in the main street of Urga. Two hundred feet broad is this street. Mud walls twenty feet high flank it. The gates to the enclosures are closed. The fast-fading light discloses hardly any passers-by. Save for a distant tom-tom there is deep silence brooding over the city. A great empty square is entered, where a few figures are passing in the distance. We approach one of these, who upon our question lurches up to the tarantass. He is a Russian clad in Mongol _shuba_, rather the worse for liquor. “I will show you,” he says amiably. Affectionately leading the horses, he reels down one dark alley, then down the next, until we come to a second broad street and to an enclosure with a lantern-lighted gate. A cry brings at length a stir within. The gate swings open. “The _Varlakoff_ house!” says the guide thickly. The tarantass is led in, and we stumble through the darkness into a Russian home of some pretensions. In the main room is a lamp and a table covered with a red cloth. A glass of tea is available and is quickly swallowed. Then, tired out, we roll up in our blankets, on the floor, and drop off to our first night’s sleep in Urga, the Holy City of Mongolia. VI