File:The Russian road to China (1910) (14758756025).jpg

Identifier: russianroadtochi00bateuoft (find matches)
Title: The Russian road to China
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Bates, Lindon Wallace, 1883-1915
Subjects: Trans-Siberian railroad Siberia (Russia) -- Description and travel China -- Description and travel
Publisher: Boston Houghton Mifflin company

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he sheep-fat just seethed. A chatter of conversation goes on, the neighborsdrift in and out, and those of our gir, as the even-ing wears on, make excursions to the other huts andexhibit and drink more muddy tea for politenesssake. The hostess in each tent shakes your handbefore feeding you. The formality makes you tem-porarily one of the tribe and family, to be treatedwith courtesy and hospitality. Thus you are takeninto the social life of a simple affectionate people. We meet in one hut a traveling friar who hastramped sturdily from Tibet, pack on back andprayer-beads on arm, begging, praying, selling relicsclaiming to cure rheumatism, and the eye-diseaseswhich the smoky huts induce. He carries on a polean image of Gumbo and others of the dokchits, to-gether with a hodge-podge collection of rosaries,strips of silk, bells, beads, pipe-picks, etc. Theseare jingled during parts of his prayer, where it isnecessary to keep the god attentive. In one hut they are playing the age-old game of
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A MONGOL BLACK MAN IN TATAR TENTS 207 tawarya. A bag is produced containing hundredsof sheeps-knuckles, colored blue. Everybody getsa handful. Then a girl holds out her fistful of them,and each man guesses the number. There is a rapidfire of shouted numerals, — niger, hayur, urbu,durbuT The one who guesses correctly gets thehandful of knuckles. This person next holds outhis fistful, and so it goes. It is an uproarious sport,interspersed with quite unnecessary grabbings ofdisputed handfuls, — part of the game that Ama-gallan is playing, even if not germane to tawarya. Finally through the darkness you make your wayback to the gir in which you are billeted. Thewreathing smoke from its dome is illuminated to-night by the beams from the fire below. It risesin dimly bright convolutions, beautiful in its smallway as the great Northern Lights. You spread yourfelt on the floor of the tent and roll up in your rugs.The teamster needs a timepiece to regulate his hourof harnessing, for you mus

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