Mongol Dinner Table
The desert is crossed by various ridges and small mountain chains, that increase in frequency and make the country more broken as one approaches the Tolla, the largest stream between Pekin and Kiachta. The road, after traversing the last of these chains, suddenly reveals a wide valley which bears evidence of fertility in its dense forests, and the straggling fields which receive less attention than they deserve.
The Tolla has an ugly habit of rising suddenly and falling deliberately. When at its height, the stream has a current of about seven miles an hour, and at the fording place the water is over the back of an ordinary pony. The bottom of the river consists of large boulders of all sizes from an egg up to a cotton bale, and the footing for both horses and camels is not specially secure. The camels need a good deal of persuasion with clubs before they will enter the water; they have an instinctive dread of that liquid and avoid it whenever they can. Horses are less timorous, and the best way to get a camel through the ford is to lead him behind a horse and pound him vigorously at the same time. When the river is at all dangerous there is always a swarm of natives around the ford ready to lend a hand if suitably compensated. They all talk very much and in loud tones; their voices mingle with the neighing of horses, the screams of camels, the roaring of the river, and the laughter of the idlers when any mishap occurs. The confused noises are in harmony with the scene on either bank, where baggage is piled promiscuously, and the natives are grouped together in various picturesque attitudes. Men with their lower garments rolled as high as possible, or altogether discarded, walk about in perfect nonchalance; their queues hanging down their backs seem designed as rudders to steer the wearers across the stream.