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They had as their guide and negotiator a Kalmuck Lamaite. The following morning we were approaching a small settlement of Russian colonists and noticed some horsemen looking out from the woods. One of our young and brave Tartars galloped off at full speed toward these men in the wood but soon wheeled and returned with a reassuring smile. "All right," he exclaimed, laughing, "keep right on."
At the bottom of a very steep slope was laid up a large pile of stones and tree trunks, making a cone of some three metres in height. These obo are the Lamaite sacred signs set up at dangerous places, the altars to the bad demons, rulers of these places.
The Bolsheviki from the Irkutsk district had crossed the Mongolian border, captured the Russian colony at Khathyl on the southern shore of Lake Kosogol and turned, off south toward Muren Kure, a Russian settlement beside a big Lamaite monastery sixty miles south of Kosogol.
Motorcars, gramophones, telephones, crystals, porcelains, pictures, perfumes, musical instruments, rare animals and birds; elephants, Himalayan bears, monkeys, Indian snakes and parrots all these were in the palace of "the god" but all were soon cast aside and forgotten. To Urga come pilgrims and presents from all the Lamaite and Buddhist world.
One of the Tartars the next day brought to their camp a rich Mongol with whom he drove the bargain for this trade. He gave us nineteen camels and took all our horses, one rifle, one pistol and the best Cossack saddle. He advised us by all means to visit the sacred Monastery of Narabanchi, the last Lamaite monastery on the road from Mongolia to Tibet.
There also we saw tablets of clay with the cuneiform inscriptions, evidently from Babylonia; Chinese, Indian and Tibetan books shelved beside those of Mongolia; tomes of the ancient pure Buddhism; books of the "Red Caps" or corrupt Buddhism; books of the "Yellow" or Lamaite Buddhism; books of traditions, legends and parables.
He told us that the Holy Hutuktu, "the Incarnate Buddha," would be greatly offended if we did not visit the monastery and his famous "Shrine of Blessings," where all travelers going to Tibet always offered prayers. Our Kalmuck Lamaite supported the Mongol in this. I decided to go there with the Kalmuck. The Tartars gave me some big silk hatyk as presents and loaned us four splendid horses.
It was the temple where the ancient books and manuscripts were kept and the broken ornaments and objects used in the religious ceremonies together with the robes of deceased Hutuktus preserved. A sheer cliff rose behind this museum, which it was impossible for one to climb. On the face of this were carved images of the Lamaite gods, scattered about without any special order.
The name of this Hutuktu is highly esteemed not only in all Mongolia but in Tibet and in the Lamaite world of China. We spent the night in his splendid yurta and on the following morning visited the shrines where they were conducting very solemn services with the music of gongs, tom-toms and whistling.
As he was dying, he told about the time when he lived according to the will of the Goro on a red star in the east, floated in the ice-covered ocean and flew among the stormy fires in the depths of the earth." These are the tales which I heard in the Mongolian yurtas of Princes and in the Lamaite monasteries. These stories were all related in a solemn tone which forbade challenge and doubt.
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