World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English; World War, 1914-1918 -- Russia (Federation) -- Siberia
After climbing the great Hinghan Range the plains of Mongolia came as a
wonder to me. Imagine if you can a perfectly flat land through which
your train glides hour after hour, day after day. The whole is covered
with rough grass and a growth somewhat like a huge horse daisy or
marguerite. At the time we passed these plants had dried, and a terrific
wind sweeping over the plains had broken countless numbers of the dry
herb off near the ground. They fell on their round sides. Directly the
plants had lost their anchorage away they bounded like catherine wheels
over the plains. It does not require much imagination to picture
hundreds of thousands of these rounded tufts of dried grass bounding
along over immense distances. It is quite a fascinating pastime to
select a few of the larger and better formed ones coming over the
horizon and calculate how long they take to arrive opposite your
position. Calculations made in this way convinced me that a small
coloured message properly fastened to these moving objects might have
been carried five hundred miles in twenty-four hours. If, instead of
looking at one, you look at the whole, the impression is of the solid
earth passing rapidly from west to east. There are occasional
obstructions in the shape of a huge flock of sheep which would cover
half of Rutlandshire. These are herded by quaintly dressed Mongolian
Tartars, on wonderful shaggy-haired horses, who ride at a furious pace
around their flocks and guard them from attack by the wolves which
infest this part of the world. It is worth recording how they do so. The
wolf is a very cunning animal who has numerous methods of attack, and,
like a hare, is very difficult to locate if in his form and practically
level with the ground. But his very cunning is often his undoing. On no
account will the wolf allow a string on which there are little coloured
rags fluttering to pass over him, nor will he willingly get near it. The
Tartar herdsmen go forward in line over the plain in the direction their
flocks are feeding with a small strong string with little coloured flags
fluttering along it, fastened from horse to horse. This effectively
sweeps the whole space as the trawler sweeps the sea. No wolf can hope
to escape the trained eye of the Tartar near the horse where the strain
of the line lifts it high off the ground, and no wolf will allow the
line to pass near him, hence the herdsman gets both sport and profit
out of his occupation. Having fed off the grass and herbs in one place,
the whole Tartar tribe moves forward at regular periods on what appears
to be an endless crawl across the world, but what is really an appointed
round, settled and definite, within the territorial lands of the race to
which it belongs. Their women and children journey with them and hunt
and ride with the men, free as the plains over which they travel. In
spite of this community of interests the men seem to place but very
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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