While this feudal system applies in general to the whole _eimuck_, in Urga the Gigin has a unique position. The city is a great monastery, practically all of the permanent native population of fifteen thousand being priests. The laymen who are there are mostly pilgrims, or dependents upon the Church. Over these the Gigin is master, so that Urga is known as “The Holy Living God’s Encampment.” Over the Russians and the Buriat tribesmen, the Chinese have no actual sway, and from them they collect no taxes. The Russian consul is dictator to this little flock; and behind his stockade, where the tricolor waves, rally the Orthodox in times of danger. Across from the _Zinzin’s_ doorway is a spiked stockade. Inside, where they have been thrust through a hole just big enough for a man’s body, are the miserable criminals. In the big pit dug with their naked hands, the wretches cower, shelterless, under the terrible cold of winter. They live or die there, sometimes fed by the charity of Mongols, sometimes forgotten, sometimes purchasing miserable fragments of offal with the unstolen remnants of the prison allowance. Few waste sympathy on the inmates. The low level of existence of those outside makes the place perhaps less terrible than it would be to people who had known other conditions. It is a grim Chinese jest, this loathsome prison for those who have stolen bread in the market-place, set opposite the palace of the grafting governor who has filched the tribute of Tu-she-tu. From the Chinese city now, there begins to come the distant throb of drums and clash of cymbals. Three gorgeous Mongols gallop past in their splendid free-reined horsemanship. A sentry stalks to the door of the stockaded prison, and looks toward the gray walls and temples of Maimachen. The procession of the New Moon is to pass to-day. You leap onto your little Mongol riding-pony, and spurring him into a gallop, hasten along the way to the Chinese city. He tears down the broad road. The resplendent trotting horsemen take the pace as a challenge, and yell joyfully for a race as their whips come down on their own horses’ flanks. Mongol girls walking hand in hand along the highway scatter and call out as the riders clatter by. It is contagious. Soon a score of riders are shouting, shaking bridles, and lashing ponies, and it is a cavalcade of racers that gallops up to the gate of Maimachen.