All the while one has an eerie undefined sentiment that something is lacking. It is not that the houses which face the narrow main street are low and poor, that the gray mud-walled compounds are grimly unwelcoming with their closed iron-studded gates. It is not that the small stocks of goods in the shops tell of a vanished prosperity, now that the bulk of the tea-trade has left. It is not anything material, but an oppressive indefinable feeling that something is lacking. Only when Alexsimevich makes a chance remark, do you realize consciously what it was you instinctively felt, “It is queer to be in a city where there is not a woman or child.” Some have explained the exclusion law which controls the situation by the self-sufficiency of the Chinese, who wished no real settlement of their people here,--the fruit of a pride deep-rooted as that underlying the custom which brings every corpse back to China for burial. Others, by the desire to avoid transmitting to the Empire the diseases that are rife in Mongolia. Whatever the basis, the regulation is in full force to-day. At one time merchants in Maimachen kept their wives across the border in Russia, which under a subterfuge was not technically forbidden. But the ability to hide behind a technicality is a blessing enjoyed especially in democracies. It did not go with the chief of police, who came down for a squeeze which made it more profitable to pay the women’s fare home than to continue to offend. [Illustration: A WAYSIDE TEMPLE] Associating with the native Mongol women is here precluded by the fact that there are no settlements near by from which the Chinese might get indigenous consolation. A deserted tract lies behind the town. Only camel-drivers, wood-cutters, and sellers of cattle come into Maimachen, and they leave at night. For though the Mongols, in their pointed hats, pass along the streets, none may lawfully live within the stockaded walls, and none keep shop beneath the carved eaves of the houses which flank its narrow streets. This is the prerogative of Chinese traders from beyond the far-off Wall.