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Updated: June 13, 2025
Those were the days when the great tea merchants of Kiakhta heaped up huge fortunes, to squander them in ways common to the suddenly rich all over the world. But with the building of the railway, trade turned aside, and to-day the town bears the marks of decaying fortunes.
Beyond the fact that the people about there are Mongols rather than Chinese, and that such religion as they have is that of Thibet rather than China, for their priests are called lamas, I know nothing except that the caravan route from Kiakhta to Pekin is somewhere about a thousand miles, and that the camels do it in about thirty-five days."
The difference, I am told, mainly arises from the fact that the caravan tea, exposed to the air during its twelve months' journey in loose and clumsy and much-shaken paper and sheep-skin bundles, gets rid of the tannin and other gross substances, a process of purification which cannot be effected in the necessarily sealed and hermetically-closed boxes in which it reaches Europe by the sea-route; so that if sea-faring tea, like port-wine, easily recommends itself to the taste and nerves of a strong, hard-working man, a dainty, refined lady will give preference to a cup of Kiakhta tea, as she would to a glass of Château Yquem.
They had only been waiting for this to make a move, for the pasture had for some time been getting short, and on the following day the tents were pulled down, and for three days they journeyed east, and then finding a suitable spot again pitched their tents. They were now, as the Buriat told them, only some thirty miles from Kiakhta. Godfrey and Alexis had talked matters over during the journey.
"I am afraid," he said to the Buriat, who was looking on anxiously, "that his skull is injured or there is concussion of the brain. The only thing that I can see will be for him to be carried at once to Kiakhta. There is sure to be a hospital there and doctors." "That would be best," the Buriat said; "but I will take a house there, and my wife and sister shall nurse him."
He said that no passport would insure success by the method we proposed to pursue; that, before he could allow us to make the venture, we must wait for an order from Peking. This, he said, would subject us to considerable delay and expense, even if the telegraph and post were utilized through Siberia and Kiakhta. This was discouraging indeed.
Petersburg is doubtless to be attributed in an important measure to its overland transportation, and its consequent escape from dampness; the large quantities consumed in Russia being, as before observed, all carried from the northwest of China to Kiakhta, whence it is distributed over the empire.
How is it the Chinese can send their envoys from Urga and Kiakhta to Kobdo, asking for assistance, and the Mongol Government cannot do it? Why?" "Will the Chinese send help to Urga?" I asked. Our guest laughed hoarsely and said: "I caught all the envoys, took away their letters and then sent them back . . . into the ground." He laughed again and glanced around peculiarly with his blazing eyes.
We are not far from the Chinese frontier here, are we?" "No; the frontier is at Kiakhta, not more than three or four hundred miles away." "What are the people like?" "They are called Buriats, and are a sort of Mongol tribe, living generally in tents and wandering with their flocks and herds through the country like the patriarchs of old."
Article 3 of the Kiakhta Agreement, 1915, prohibiting Outer Mongolia from concluding treaties with foreign powers respecting political and territorial question acknowledges China's right to negotiate and make such treaties.
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