“‘It is mine. I will appeal to the Consul,’ said my friend. “The Gigin’s men could not take a Russian’s horse, so they had to give it up. The Mongol woman came and wept on him, she was so glad. She brought a gift to my friend. Generally the Gigin returns such borrowed booty when he has used it a while, but often not. Anything that is new, the God will buy. These pilgrims, you see, bring him offerings. Kalmuks come all the way from the Volga, Manchus make pilgrimages, Buriats come down from north of Baikal, and tribesmen from Tibet. He has half a million roubles a year from his priests, and he does not care for anybody.” Becoming more and more steeped in celestial gossip, we go past the gray-plastered compounds piled high with wood and timber, a main export of Urga. Tall masts with logs suspended from them are the signs. We reach at last a big stockaded courtyard, the beginning of the monastery quarters. “Come, look in here!” says the guide. You peer through the gateway at six of the biggest bronze _burgoo_-kettles that ever existed outside an ogre’s kitchen. Each kettle can hold a couple of cows. “It is to feed the monks,” says your companion. The Mongols are going up to the vessels, with buckets suspended to the end of a milkmaid’s yoke. They dip up a load. The soup looks like gray tapioca pudding. What it is made of remains one of the secrets of the monastery, whose chef is stirring the mixture with an oar. A big stockade, enclosing tents and peaked _soumé_, from which the sound of chattering is heard, appears ahead. As we approach, a whole hive of boys swarm out and scatter in all directions. Some are in red, some in yellow, some wear ordinary Mongol caps, some wear high, yellow sugar-loaf fools’-caps, which fall over on one side. These are the novices in training for the lama hierarchy. The first-born of each family must by immemorial custom become a lama. In babyhood and boyhood one of these dedicated children is clad in yellow robes and is especially tended. “_Ubashi_,” he is called. When about ten years old the boy goes to school, at Urga. He becomes a _bandi_, or student of the prayers and of the Tibetan language. He runs about as those we have just seen, and at about twenty he becomes a _gitzul_, or first-degree lama. Now he shaves head and beard, and wears a brilliant yellow and red robe. Next he takes the more advanced examination and catechism, and becomes a full priest, or _gilun_, forbidden to marry, to kill, or to work. He may continue his curriculum in one of the departments of the lamasery, studying divinity, medicine, or astrology. In the divinity course a lama will memorize Tibetan prayers, and pore for years over the big holy books which lie within the chests of the lamasery chapels. He will repeat the creed over his beads, in rapt self-hypnotism, meditating in celestial holiness. He will pray down rain for the grass, and will exorcise glanders from the ponies.