United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


They lived in such peace and plenty, that in their homes the day was a festival, and the night was a shabi barat . Thieves, robbers, pickpockets, swindlers, and all such as were vicious and dishonest, he utterly exterminated, and no vestige of them allowed he to remain in his kingdom. The doors of the houses were unshut all night, and the shops of the bazar remained open.

On the way from Zain Shabi Bezrodnoff came across the group of Poletika and Michailoff. He instituted a search which disclosed suspicious documents in their baggage and in that of Michailoff and his wife the silver and other possessions taken from the Chinese. From this group of sixteen he sent N. N. Philipoff to Baron Ungern, released three others and shot the remaining twelve.

Thus ended in Zain Shabi the life of one party of Uliassutai refugees and the activities of the group of Poletika. In Uliassutai Bezrodnoff shot Chultun Beyli for the violation of the treaty with the Chinese, and also some Bolshevist Russian colonists; arrested Domojiroff and sent him to Urga; and . . . restored order. The predictions about Chultun Beyli were fulfilled.

A luminous night-scene is therefore compared to the shabi barat. I warrant you there were no "tickets of leave" granted in those blessed days. This means an impertinent, or rather a chaffing, question, like our own classic interrogation, "Does your mother know you'ra out?" It is incumbent on every good Musalman to pray five times in the twenty-four hours.

We foreigners separated into two parties, one traveling by the old caravan route across the Gobi considerably to the south of Urga to Kuku-Hoto or Kweihuacheng and Kalgan, and mine, consisting of my friend, two Polish soldiers and myself, heading for Urga via Zain Shabi, where Colonel Kazagrandi had asked me in a recent letter to meet him.

In the meantime a eunuch brought some covered trays on the heads of porters, and laid them before me, and said, "The princess has sent you a dinner from her own table; partake of it." I went along with her; she led me to the private apartment; the effect of the lights was such that the shabi kadr was nothing to it.

The Hutuktu also brought down one as well as a musk antelope that came unexpectedly from behind a rock hard by. The largest pair of horns weighed about thirty pounds, but they were from a young sheep. The day following our return to Zain Shabi, as I was feeling quite recovered, I decided to go on to Van Kure.

Only Philipoff did not know that his Mongol guide was armed with a bomb and that another Mongol had been sent on ahead with a letter to Baron Ungern. He did not know that Poletika and his brothers were shot at the same time in Zain Shabi. Philipoff was in a hurry and wanted to reach Van Kure that day. I left an hour after him. From this point we began traveling along the ourton road.

He was drunk all the time and a great card player, always making side-splitting jokes that greatly offended the Lamas. That same evening I made the acquaintance of the second Hubilgan who called on me, the real administrator of Zain Shabi, which is an independent dominion subject directly to the Living Buddha.

The reason for his vengeful spirit was that the Bolsheviki had tortured him in prison and, after his escape, had killed all his family. He was now taking his revenge. I put up with a Russian firm and was at once visited by my associates from Uliassutai, who greeted me with great joy because they had been much exercised about the events in Van Kure and Zain Shabi.