Mr. Kidston devotes to the characteristies of the Mongols several pages s0 packed with observations and facts concisely stated that it is difficult to summraiso them farther. We solest rome the more striking raphs,.- Both in features of in churactor they are far less foreign to the European than the Chinese. They have often almost ruddy complexions; they laugh more heartily, have none of the endless foralities and (to. us) crooked ways of thought that distinguish the Chinese, and they have even certain customs that strike oneas being distinctly Western. The women, for instance, when they meet, embrace one another and kiss on both cheeks, while the men shake both hands.
"The apparent strength and robustness of the people is probably due to the survival of the physically fittest only, rather than to any exceptional healthiness in the race. Infant mortality in such a life us the Mongols lead must be enormous, and _on the whole journey I never saw a single Mongol baby. This, and the fact that an enormous proportion of the male population is vowed to celibacy, makes one ready to believe that the race must be dying out rather than increasing.
"No Mongol can do the very simplest thing without talking it over for at lost half an-hour with his friends. They are themest unpractical people I ever came across. They have a handred opportunities ready to thei hands of making thei hard lives easier, but they never avail themselves of any of them. Their neigh-hours on ths Russian frontier use sledges and make hay, but the Mongols do neither. They prefer to bump along through the deep ins in thole crazy carts, and rather than cut the grass at their doors for winter fodder, they move their tents every few days in the bitter weather in search of fresh pasture under the scow..... Their cart have two holes in the ends of the shafts, and a tangle of string, is passed through thes and slung about the animal in any way that seems most convenient, with the result that the beast has to do little more than shrug his shoulders and the cart. and its contents are left reposing in the snow.
"In spite of these haphazard ways, I doubt if the Mongols are really a stupid people. We met some very capable men among them, and incorrigible laziness and want of forethought are probably far more to blame than lack of intalig-nes.
"They are excitable, but courage iv not their strong point, and disputes dio out in a lengthy warfare of words.
Hospitality is a universal virtue and one may enter any "'yurt" on the plain and be sure of " welcome. One crawls inside the low door, a place is at once made beside the fire, snow is piled high in the bronze pot, a chip from a brick of tea hacked off with a hatchet, and tes prepared, either boiled with milk or with slices of fat, cut from the tail of a fat-tailed sheep. 'A wooden bowl of cheese, butter, and clotted cream is passed round, and one helps oneself to these delicacies with one's fingers. Snuff-bottles are exchanged—the universal form of greeting in Mongolia—and questions are asked as to the health of the family and the welfare of the flocks and-herds. No payment is ever expected, and when we made small presents of packets of needles, fragments of looking-glass, or other trifles, the re-though intensely gratified, looked genuinely astonished.
"The Mongol yurt'' is shaped exactly like an inverted bowl; the framework of the walls is composed of a trellis of wooden staves, fastened very neatly together with strings of hide; it is in three pieces, each of which folds together on the game' priuciple as the neck of an old-fashioned chain purse, The framework of the roof is made to shut up like a Chinese umbrella, the ribs being attached to a central ring, which forms the hole by which the smoke of the fire escapes, and which can he closed at night by drawing a flap of felt across it. The door is a small oblong aperture about three feet high.
"Mongol "requirements are few and simple and the contents of every yurt' ea the plain are almost identical in charscter and in the uses to which they are.put: Riches consist entirely of flocks and herds, and the furniture and appointments of the yarr? of a wealthy man differ only in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.