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Most of the inhabitants were Mongols from the city who had pitched their yurts in the valley for the summer. Although the wealthiest natives seem to feel that for the reception of guests their "position" demands a foreign house, they seldom live in it. Duke Loobitsan Yangsen had completed his mansion the previous winter.
Loobitsan had never seen Peking and was anxious to go. When General Hsu Shu-tseng made his coup d'état in November, 1919, Mr. Larsen and Loobitsan came to the capital as representatives of the Hutukhtu, and one day, as my wife was stepping into a millinery shop on Rue Marco Polo, she met him dressed in all his Mongol splendor.
It was built in Russian style and furnished with an assortment of hideous rugs and foreign furniture which made one shiver. But in the yard behind the house his yurt was pitched, and there he lived in comfort. Loobitsan was a splendid fellow one of the best types of Mongol aristocrats. From the crown of his finely molded head to the toes of his pointed boots, he was every inch a duke.
It was discouraging, to say the least. We camped in the gathering darkness on a forty-five-degree slope in mud twelve inches deep. Next day we gathered up our scattered belongings, repaired the cart, and reached the river. I had a letter from Duke Loobitsan Yangsen to a famous old hunter, Tserin Dorchy by name, who lives in the Terelche region.
He was sentenced to remain a year; but the old man would not have lived a month if Duke Loobitsan Yangsen, with whom he had often hunted, had not obtained his release. His independent spirit is by no means chastened, however, and I feel sure that he will shoot another deer on the Bogdo-ol before he dies!
But he was so closely chaperoned by Chinese officials that he could not enjoy himself. I saw Larsen not long afterward, and he told me that Loobitsan was already pining for the open plains of his beloved Mongolia. In mid-July, when we returned to Urga, the vegetable season was at its height.
I saw him in his house one day reclining on a kang while he received half a dozen minor officials, and his manner of quiet dignity and conscious power recalled accounts of the Mongol princes as Marco Polo saw them. Loobitsan liked foreigners and one could always find a cordial reception in his compound. He spoke excellent Chinese and was unusually well educated for a Mongol.
One huge beast over six feet tall was just in front of me, and as I stood with my fingers crooked about the trigger of the automatic in my pocket, I thought, "If you start, I'm going to nail you anyway." Just at this moment of indecision our Mongol leaped on my wife's pony, shouted that he was going to Duke Loobitsan Yangsen, an influential friend of ours, and dashed away.
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