A Tour in Mongolia by Beatrix Manico Gull

"Those who know do not speak; those speak who do not know"

-- _Chinese proverb_

The Mongol belief in an immediate re-incarnation leads them to be entirely careless of their dead, and the only description of tomb I saw in Urga were a couple of dagobas erected over priests' graves. "What does it matter? " they say. "The body is only a case for the spirit, and the spirit is at once born again into a new case. " I think that herein lies the reason they never seem to trouble to wash their "cases". Corpses are carried out on to the hill-side on the tail of an ox-cart, a lama accompanying the man in charge of it. The lama selects an auspicious spot; the man whips up his pony, jerks the corpse to the ground, and they drive quickly off without looking back. The rest is left to luck. If the body is rapidly devoured by wild beasts and birds of prey, the virtue of the deceased is established in the face of any evidence to the contrary. If, however, the process of dissolution is protracted, a bad name will cling to the reputation of the departed and also reflect inconveniently on his surviving family as long as spiteful memory permits.

A lasting impression of Urga is that of a city strewn with bones, and horrible, ghoulish, and terribly savage dogs prowling among them. You may count these dogs sometimes in hundreds about the refuse heaps that surround Urga. Often they may be seen silently gnawing, gnawing away at something which makes you shudder as you ride quickly past. One never ventures outside one's door unarmed, for in winter the dogs are very fierce with hunger, and in summer there is always danger of meeting a mad brute. Only a few months before we stayed there a young lama from the temple just outside our compound was torn to pieces by these pariah dogs. He was a fine strong young man, but had gone forth alone one winter's day and was without a weapon. A number of dogs attacked him and before anyone could respond to his cries they had dragged him away to a neighbouring refuse heap and there torn him limb from limb. The dogs belong to nobody, and as well as being a constant source of danger, they are most repulsive looking creatures, always unsightly from some horrible disease that seems to beset them. The Mongol view is that these dogs act as scavengers and so save them the trouble of disposing of their refuse.

Cut off completely from the world, as it seemed, I received neither letters nor news of outside affairs, nor did I observe during this gala time at Urga much evidence as to the unsettled state of Chinese and Mongolian political matters. An occasional telegram was received by my host from his colleague at Kalgan telling him something of the movements of the two opposing forces, but it was little that we learned as to what was happening, and if one had remained much longer there one would certainly have come to regard Urga as the centre of the universe, and to attach paramount importance to Mongolia as a political unit.

The news, therefore, that Mr. Grant, a young Scotsman engaged in the Chinese telegraph service, had been murdered by Mongol soldiery at Ta-Bol was a great shock. We had met the companion who set out with him, the preparations for whose expedition I had watched with such interest three months before from the mission compound at Kalgan, when we passed through Verkne-Oudinsk, and were told by him that Mr. Grant would probably reach Urga before we left it. The story as it came to us through Mongol sources was that Hung-hu-tzes had descended upon this poor young fellow for food at an isolated telegraph station, and that when they had exhausted his supplies, he, though resenting their importunities, had despatched urgent messages to the Chinese Government for relief. It is said that a telegram was sent to Yuan Shih K'ai himself; but the Chinese Government were apathetic, or they did not see the force of feeding this robber band whose object was to destroy their men, when it was all they could do to supply their own soldiers with the barest necessities. In any case, no relief came, and Grant in desperation, no Chinese or Mongol being willing to undertake the journey, finally set off to Kalgan that he might obtain the stores necessary in order to continue his tour of inspection north. Why the authorities allowed him to return under the conditions prevailing in Inner Mongolia at that time it is difficult to understand. Be that as it may, upon reaching Ta-Bol again in company with three Chinese he was apparently captured by Mongol soldiers, who met him with the demand that he should hand over his supplies and his Chinese as well to them. He should go free, they said, if he complied, but if he refused they would kill him.

To his eternal honour be it recorded that Grant stood by his Chinese companions. The Mongols, although they murdered him in cold blood, have at least been forced to admit that the white man was their equal in their boasted bravery; that he knew something of which they know nothing -- the supreme virtue of self-sacrifice. He did not die with the satisfaction of knowing that he was saving the life of others in so doing -- one hopes that many of us would be capable of paying that price for such a reward. He died because he would not save his own life at the price of blood even though that blood was inevitably to be shed. From Mongol lips the account of the final scene comes to us. Announcing their intention of putting him to death, soldiers crowded round him to take him captive. He jeered that so large a number should be necessary to bind a single man. "We will soon stop your laughing," they said, and lining up twenty men they shot him down.