File:In the uttermost East, being an account of investigations among the natives and Russian convicts of the island of Sakhalin, with notes of travel in Korea, Siberia, and Manchuria (1903) (14784309973).jpg

Identifier: inuttermosteastb00hawe (find matches)
Title: In the uttermost East, being an account of investigations among the natives and Russian convicts of the island of Sakhalin, with notes of travel in Korea, Siberia, and Manchuria
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Hawes, Charles Henry, 1867-1943
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Harper
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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te field of curiosity, or a species of joke. When,however, as I stood guarding my baggage in the buffet atManchuria station, the door opened, and a fine, tall figure,dressed in a handsome, claret-coloured, fur-lined robe andgirdle, a crimson silk Chinese close-fitting hat, and longscarlet silk tassel, stepped in, I asked myself, Could thisindeed be a Buriat ? He seemed out of place hereamongst us travel-stained voyagers. The House of Lords,on the day of its opening by the king in person, was thefitting place for him. That he should be a member of anomad tribe seemed scarcely credible. Yet it was so, andthere are many such as he rich in flocks and herds. This tribe, which has been estimated to number atleast 200,000, has its habitat on the south-eastern side ofLake Baikal, chiefly around Selenginsk, but is scatteredas far east as Nerchensk, and to the north around Barguzin.Like the Iceni of Norfolk, they are a horse-breeding people,though their herds of camels, cattle, and sheep are by
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TRANS-BAIKALIA TO MOSCOW 447 no means insignificant. Living in portable felt tents, oryurti, as the Russians call them, they are ever on themove, roaming at large with their flocks and herds overthe vast steppe. In the winter, when terribly cold and boisterous windssweep across the steppe, and the scant vegetation is driedup, shelter is sought in the near hills. Then it is withreluctance that they betake themselves to the closeness of the valleys, where the hills hem them in ; but, with thereturn of spring, comes the longing fulfilled for the freedomof the far-reaching steppe, and the race, for the mere funof it, over the boundless expanse. Where else, but in thisdry, clear air of the almost rainless steppe, seated at thetent-door, can one gaze on such glorious sunsets, orwatch the luminous stars steal out, one by one, like pen-dants in the atmosphere, and not mere apertures in anopaque hemisphere ? Like many another Mongol tribe, their early historyis at present unknown to us. That t

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