Travelling in Mongolia, 1880
When daylight came we caught our horses and started, but had gone only a very short distance when my horse’s fore-feet sunk into the earth, and as we were going…
From: 1880 C.E. To: 1880 C.E.
Location: Mongolia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Among the Mongols by James Gilmour, 1880.
When daylight came we caught our horses and started, but had gone only a very short distance when my horse’s fore-feet sunk into the earth, and as we were going at a smart pace and down hill he was unable to recover himself. For some yards he staggered along and then came down, throwing me on my head with a shock that was all the more painful on account of the chill and stiff state I was in, through not having got warmed tip after the cold of the night.
The fall was occasioned by my having allowed my horse to ride over a hollow piece of ground. These treacherous parts are the trouble of riders in Mongolia. A little rat-like animal excavates galleries underground, and a horse passing over one of these must go through. These dangerous spots are usually distinguished by a different colour and appearance from the rest of the ground, but sometimes even a practised eye may be at fault, and a few moments’ inattention is enough to bring down the best horse and rider.
Just before spring, sometimes, large tracts of the desert are fired accidentally from the unextinguished fires left by passing caravans, and purposely by the natives, that the new grass may grow up better and free from the old. In these burnt tracts it is almost impossible to distinguish the hollowed spots, and a few days later in this ride, while passing over a burnt district, my guide had his fall. He was before me, and we were going at a rapid rate when all of a sudden, I saw his horse with its head towards me, its four feet in the air, and its rider undermost. My guide was a large man, and was considerably crushed, but it is strange that he was not more hurt by so bad a fall. Both the saddle-girths were burst, but, true to his Mongol instinct, the rider held fast to the halter, and did not let his horse go.
After a little he recovered from the effects of his fall, picked up his scattered belongings, and set about repairing his broken saddle-girths. As we had no spare strings or straps with us, and were far away from human habitations, I wondered how he would make good the damage. I was not left long in suspense; without hesitation he at once took a handful of hair from the tail of his horse, twisted and plaited it together, and in a few minutes the straps were as strong as ever. As the tails of the horses are allowed to grow to the ground, a Mongol horseman on a journey is never at a great loss for a string; careless in the extreme, he is apt to forget anything that can be left behind, but when needed the tail of his horse is never far to seek.
For some days we rode on, sleeping out on the plain, dismounting about midnight to feel the grass with our hands, hobbling our horses, and “turning in” as soon as we found good pasture. About dawn we resumed our journey, drawing up at some tent about sunrise for our morning tea. Later on we stopped at some tent for breakfast, and towards evening again halted for dinner. With about two exceptions we were treated with great kindness. The "pot and ladle” were put at our service, and in most cases our tea made and our food cooked for us, no remuneration being expected, asked, or given, beyond a little tea, or the leavings of our meal, which, with this object in view, was always more abundant than was necessary to supply the wants of two travellers.
We found that we fared much more economically, and were better treated, and received with a much warmer welcome, in the tents of the poor than in the abodes of the rich. A rich man would make us wait his convenience, and expect us to make extra good tea or a meal which, both as regards quantity and quality, would be in keeping with his dignity and status, and even then we left feeling that our visit had been something of an intrusion. In the tents of the poor, on the other hand, we were warmly welcomed, our tea or food was prepared at once and in all haste, our animals were looked to as they grazed, the share of food which we left in the pot was considered a rich reward, and when all was over we were conducted forth and sent on our way again with many expressions of friendship and good wishes for the prosperity of our journey.
Some of these tents at which we put up seemed very poor and very lonely. One contained almost nothing but the skins of sheep which had died through hard weather; another was the abode of a man suffering and bent down by a spinal disease, but who had a quick and eager mind, which made him welcome us, as sources of information and news about the places we had come from and passed through; many of them were the abodes of women whose husbands were away on distant caravan journeys, while they themselves remained at home caring for the children and a small flock of goats, the kids of which, finding nothing to satisfy their climbing instincts in the flat desert, kept continually leaping on to the roof of the tent, only to be chased off by one of the children; and almost all of the poorer sort seemed destitute of tea, a want which they sought to supply by boiling again the spent remains of the pounded leaves and twigs of which brick tea is composed.
In one district we had to ride a long stretch of many miles without entering a tent. As often as we drew up at a tent a woman or man would come out and say, “Dismount at my tent at another time, we have the cough.” This cough seemed to be a kind of influenza much dreaded by the Mongols. As far as I can learn, it seldom proves fatal, but travellers are careful to avoid it, and no one would think of using the “pot and ladle” of a family suffering from this sickness.
We slept a few of the nights in tents, but I soon ceased to find fault with being compelled to sleep out in the wild. Every day took us farther into summer, and fifty or sixty miles nearer to the equator; the weather was mild, and the temperature soon became sensibly warmer. There is, moreover, one phenomenon of tent life which is not agreeable to a foreigner—the presence at night of calves, lambs, and kids.
A poor Mongol shares his tent at night with the young of his animals, and, for the most part, finds it agreeable. With them the tent is warmer, and he and his family can sleep with less to cover them, and so little repugnance seems to be felt towards them that the tents of the rich even are seldom without two or three young calves tethered near the door, which seem quite at home, and spend most of their waking hours in licking everything within their reach. In cold and stormy weather any tent, even with calves, lambs, and kids, is better than outside, but in summer, with no rain and a mild temperature, a traveller moderately provided with warm clothing finds the coolness and freshness and freedom of the open plain preferable, at least for the few nights he is engaged in crossing it. This feeling grew as the journey went on, and towards the end of it, on the southern side of the desert, I was quite as enthusiastically in favour of outside lodgings as my guide.
After five days’ ride we reached the native place of the lama who was conveying me through the desert. We did not arrive till nearly midnight, and though, as it afterwards proved, we were within about a couple of miles of his tent, we narrowly escaped sleeping out in the wild. A day or two before we had been rescued from a similar difficulty by the bark of a dog, but though we shouted no dog would answer, the night was dull, and we could find no mark of any kind that indicated where we were or where we should go. To make matters worse, we had left the great road in the afternoon, and for some time had been running across country. Though close to his own home, the lama was quite bewildered.
In Gobi no wood grows. The Mongols have, therefore, to buy in Kalgan or Urga the long fishing-rod-like birch poles used in catching their horses. As these poles are too long to carry on a camel, it is usual to tie them up into a bundle, fix one end to a camel, and let the other trail on the ground. A day or two before we had noticed a caravan with such a bundle of rods, going south, and the Mongol, as he rode hither and thither in the dark, detected in the sand the trail of this bundle of rods, and shouted out, with great glee, that we were all right, he knew all about it.
Taking his bearings from that slender trail, we set off at full speed, and were soon in his home, the lama the centre of a rapidly increasing company, which hastened to greet him on his return from a lengthened residence in the temple in which he held office in Urga, I drinking milk fresh from the cow, to the amazement of the onlookers, who here, as everywhere else, were loud in the expression of their astonishment that any one should drink milk “raw,” and not boiled, as their universal custom is.
James Gilmour. Among the Mongols. The Religious Tract Society, 1880.
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