At a slow trot the lumbering carriage rolls through the quiet town, misty in the cold of the morning. The row of shuttered shops, with their crude pictures of the wares within, are opening for the day. The little park with the benches, which are trysting-places of summer evenings, cushioned now with six inches of snow, and the low log houses beyond, loom up and retire rearward, as we pass. The white church and the fenced cemetery of Troitzkosavsk are left behind, and we are on the broad paved road by which a sharp trot of half an hour brings us to Kiahta. Its scattered houses now in turn begin. The big tea-compound, of four square white walls, flanks us and is gone. The officials’ residences and the barracks of the garrison appear and vanish behind. The street opens out into a big square, where, shimmering against the white ground, stands the great church of _Voskresenie_, the Resurrection. On its green dome, lifted high in appeal and in promise, gleams the gilded cross. In white and green and gold Russia raises inspiringly the symbols of Slavonic faith before the doors of the heathen empire. As we pass the white Russian church, the litany of the popes and the answering chant of the choir come faintly wafted from within. But even as the Christians sing, the clash of distant cymbals and the roll of a far-off prayer-drum meet and mingle with the echoes. On the hill across the border, in vivid scarlet against the snow, with painted walls, sacred dragon-eaves, and flapping bannerets, flames a Chinese temple. Here now is the borderland of empires. The neutral strip is in front, a hundred _sagenes_ broad. The Cossack sentries stand at ease before their striped boxes, which face toward Mongolia. Far to the east and far to the west are seen stretching the long lines of posts marking the boundary. The outmost sentry, as the tarantass rolls across the strip, hails you with a last “_De svidania!_” (God speed!) Past the Chinese boundary-post, covered with hieroglyphic placards and shaped like the lotus-bud, we drive, and in under the painted gateway of the gray-plastered wall. No Männlicher-armed Chinese regulars, like those that in Manchuria throng to hold what is lost, guard this half-forgotten road. No sentry watches; no custom-officer bids the strangers stop. Through the open gate we ride into the narrow street of the trading city of the frontier--Maimachen, the unguarded back door to China.