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One hundred thirty days yet and it is finished; then . . . Nirvana! How wearied I am with sorrow, woe and hate!" We were silent for a long time. I felt that I had now a mortal enemy in Colonel Sepailoff and that I should get out of Urga at the earliest possible moment. It was two o'clock at night. Suddenly Baron Ungern stood up.
I should never have allowed them to separate me from my wife and, to prevent it, probably would have had to use my pistol. Had I begun to shoot, death for both of us would have been inevitable. The day that we arrived in Urga from the plains we found the city flooded.
And then the valley opened into a wide plain seamed by many rivers, and there before us, on the high right bank of the Tola and facing Bogda Ola, the Holy Mountain, lay Urga the Sacred, second to Lhasa only in the Buddhist world.
I would use little money in crossing the desert, and of course the less I carried the better, but a good sum must be forthcoming when I reached Urga and the railway, so the bank furnished me with drafts on the native banks and their own branches, and I had no difficulty, while from Peking I carried dollars and taels to meet expenses at the start.
The Living Buddha was silent for a time, whispered a prayer and then continued: "Urga, the ancient nest of Buddhism. . . . With Jenghiz Khan on his European conquest went out the Olets or Kalmucks. They remained there almost four hundred years, living on the plains of Russia.
The desert proper is finished before one reaches the mountains bordering the Tolla; after crossing that stream and leaving Urga the road passes through a hilly country, sprinkled, it is true, with a good many patches of sand, but having plenty of forest and frequently showing fertile valleys.
Any Mongol violating this law is condemned to death, while foreigners are deported. Crossing the Bogdo-Ol is forbidden under penalty of death. This command was transgressed by only one man, Baron Ungern, who crossed the mountain with fifty Cossacks, penetrated to the palace of the Living Buddha, where the Pontiff of Urga was being held under arrest by the Chinese, and stole him.
The Chinese Dignitary at Urga and his assistants in the other localities of autonomous Outer Mongolia and also their staff are to enjoy the right to use the courier stations of the autonomous Mongolian Government conformably to the stipulations of Article XI of the Russo-Mongolian Protocol of 21st October, 1912. Art. 21. Art. 22.
"Can't get rid of us that easily, can he, Joan?" The little man smirked knowingly at the girl. "It was all very simple," he went on. "No sooner had you two left us than we heard the thud of a flier landing on the other end of the roof. The pilot looked out at us startled. We recognized each other simultaneously. It was our old friend Urga." Hilary clenched his fist.
Of course, they cannot cross the desert when the grass is dry, so that transportation is divided by the season camels in winter and carts in summer. Thus, by the time goods have reached Urga, their value has increased tremendously. I can see no reason why motor trucks could not make the trip and am intending to use them on my next expedition.
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