Any idea of loneliness. was soon!
spelled. By the second day eountry visitors had begun to. dray offering to sell us eggs oF sa} frankly that they had come to hi a look. We also found that we wore an a country road, along which now, and again would lurch a cart pulled by four or five short-legged, graathearted Inner Mongolian p with long tails and manes in elf: locks. The carts, at this season, were almost all laden with sheep-, skis and goat skins, gathered from, the countryside for the Kueihua et Among the most interesting visi. tors wera the peddlers, almost all of them adventurous Pastingfu men, farmers by origin but too restless to stick to the land. These men are the business agents and news-criers of the outlying districts. They start out from the city with a pole over thole shoulders, a box slung at one end and a basket at the other, cat ing needles, thread; tobas29, in huge numbers in Outer Mongol and driven down slowly for months to Kueilin: thence to the markets of Peking and Tientsin. If they arrive late in the yma, they are held over the winter in sheltered places in the hills, to feed and fatten after the Jong' journey. In the late spring combed for the ball. wool, one of the best grades exported from Tientsin, before being shipped. The rice of tae wool in part pays for the keep of the flocks. The sheep and goats imported into Kueihua in 1922 were 181,549; in 1923 th creased to 223,581, but in 1924 it fell off to 150,982." "During recent years," according to the "Economic Monthly'
of the Chinese Government Bureau of Economic Affairs, "th trade with Outer Mongolia shown a steady decline; live stock alone has been reduced by 75 Bor! cent. compared with the average figure in the years toward the end of the Ching Dynasty, the main cause being attributed to heavy taxation and. the discriminate against Chinese merchants by the Mongolian Government." This discrimination ig partly the result of the pressure of Russian interests which are endeavouring to capture the whole trade of Mongolia, but is made possible by a Mon resentment for. old Chinese injustices and exploitation.
The older generation of our segol neighbours ould speak little Reproduced with permissi
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.