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In the saddle bags we also found tea, tobacco, matches and cartridges all of these valuable supplies to help us keep further hold on our lives. Two days later we were approaching the shore of the River Uri when we met two Russian riders, who were the Cossacks of a certain Ataman Sutunin, acting against the Bolsheviki in the valley of the River Selenga.
The Mongols were protesting in great agitation against the Chinese policy in their country; the Chinese raged and demanded from the Mongolians the payment of taxes for the full period since the autonomy of Mongolia had been forcibly extracted from Peking; Russian colonists who had years before settled near the town and in the vicinity of the great monasteries or among the wandering tribes had separated into factions and were fighting against one another; from Urga came the news of the struggle for the maintenance of the independence of Outer Mongolia, led by the Russian General, Baron Ungern von Sternberg; Russian officers and refugees congregated in detachments, against which the Chinese authorities protested but which the Mongols welcomed; the Bolsheviki, worried by the formation of White detachments in Mongolia, sent their troops to the borders of Mongolia; from Irkutsk and Chita to Uliassutai and Urga envoys were running from the Bolsheviki to the Chinese commissioners with various proposals of all kinds; the Chinese authorities in Mongolia were gradually entering into secret relations with the Bolsheviki and in Kiakhta and Ulankom delivered to them the Russian refugees, thus violating recognized international law; in Urga the Bolsheviki set up a Russian communistic municipality; Russian Consuls were inactive; Red troops in the region of Kosogol and the valley of the Selenga had encounters with Anti-Bolshevik officers; the Chinese authorities established garrisons in the Mongolian towns and sent punitive expeditions into the country; and, to complete the confusion, the Chinese troops carried out house-to-house searches, during which they plundered and stole.
Some years ago it was proposed to open a complete water route between Tumen and Kiachta. The most eastern point that a steamer could attain in the valley of the Ob is on the river Ket. A canal about thirty miles long would connect the Ket with the Yenesei, whence it was proposed to follow the Angara, Lake Baikal, and the Selenga to Oust Kiachta.
Among this race may be remarked the Mongolians properly so called, on the Selenga; the Kalmucks, a nomad people in the Government of Astrakhan, as also in Tomsk, in the country of the Don Cossacks, and partly in the Government of Stavropol. The Kalmucks appeared first on the eastern confines of Russia in the year 1630. About a century later we find them become the regular subjects of the Tsar.
It is not as well liked as the caviar of the Volga and Amoor, the egg being less rich than that of the sturgeon, though about the same size. If I may judge from what I saw, there is less care taken in its preparation than in that of the Volga. The road ascended the Selenga, but the valley was so wide and we kept so near its edge that the river was not often visible.
The mountains on the western shore are evidently of volcanic origin, and earthquakes are not unfrequent. A few years ago the village of Stepnoi, about twenty miles from the mouth of the Selenga, was destroyed by an earthquake. Part of the village disappeared beneath the water while another part after sinking was lifted twenty or thirty feet above its original level.
Under the influence of the cold I fell into a sound sleep, and did not heed the rough, grater-like surface of the recently frozen road. From Verkne Udinsk to Lake Baikal, the road follows the Selenga valley, which gradually widens as one descends it. The land appears fertile and well adapted to farming purposes but only a small portion is under cultivation.
I found the Kiachta route rougher than any part of the way from Chetah to Verkne Udinsk, and as the yemshick took us at a rattling pace we were pretty thoroughly shaken up. At the second station we had a dinner of stchee, or cabbage soup, with bread and the caviar of the Selenga. This caviar is of a golden color and made from the roe of a small fish that ascends from Lake Baikal.
We made both crossings of the Selenga on the ice without difficulty. It was only a single day from the time the ferry ceased running until the ice was safe for teams. We reached Verkne Udinsk late in the evening, and drove to a house where my companion had friends. The good lady brought some excellent nalifka of her own preparation, and the more we praised it the more she urged us to drink.
Puck would put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. From China to California, more than half the circuit of the globe, we can flash a signal in a second of time, and gain by the hands of the clock more than fourteen hours. From the point of divergence the road to Kiachta ascends the valley of the Selenga, while that to Irkutsk descends the left bank of the stream.
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