第68章 TRAVELING BY "URGA"(1)

Once more we traveled along the now known places, the mountain from which I espied the detachment of Bezrodnoff, the stream into which I had thrown my weapon, and soon all this lay behind us. At the first ourton we were disappointed because we did not find horses there. In the yurtas were only the host with two of his sons. Ishowed him my document and he exclaimed:

"Noyon has the right of 'urga.' Horses will be brought very soon."He jumped into his saddle, took two of my Mongols with him, providing them and himself with long thin poles, four or five metres in length, and fitted at the end with a loop of rope, and galloped away. My cart moved behind them. We left the road, crossed the plain for an hour and came upon a big herd of horses grazing there. The Mongol began to catch a quota of them for us with his pole and noose or urga, when out of the mountains nearby came galloping the owners of the herds. When the old Mongol showed my papers to them, they submissively acquiesced and substituted four of their men for those who had come with me thus far. In this manner the Mongols travel, not along the ourton or station road but directly from one herd to another, where the fresh horses are caught and saddled and the new owners substituted for those of the last herd. All the Mongols so effected by the right of urga try to finish their task as rapidly as possible and gallop like mad for the nearest herd in your general direction of travel to turn over their task to their neighbor. Any traveler having this right of urga can catch horses himself and, if there are no owners, can force the former ones to carry on and leave the animals in the next herd he requisitions. But this happens very rarely because the Mongol never likes to seek out his animals in another's herd, as it always gives so many chances for controversy.

It was from this custom, according to one explanation, that the town of Urga took its name among outsiders. By the Mongols themselves it is always referred to as Ta Kure, "The Great Monastery." The reason the Buriats and Russians, who were the first to trade into this region, called it Urga was because it was the principal destination of all the trading expeditions which crossed the plains by this old method or right of travel. A second explanation is that the town lies in a "loop" whose sides are formed by three mountain ridges, along one of which the River Tola runs like the pole or stick of the familiar urga of the plains.

Thanks to this unique ticket of urga I crossed quite untraveled sections of Mongolia for about two hundred miles. It gave me the welcome opportunity to observe the fauna of this part of the country. I saw many huge herds of Mongolian antelopes running from five to six thousand, many groups of bighorns, wapiti and kabarga antelopes. Sometimes small herds of wild horses and wild asses flashed as a vision on the horizon.

In one place I observed a big colony of marmots. All over an area of several square miles their mounds were scattered with the holes leading down to their runways below, the dwellings of the marmot.

In and out among these mounds the greyish-yellow or brown animals ran in all sizes up to half that of an average dog. They ran heavily and the skin on their fat bodies moved as though it were too big for them. The marmots are splendid prospectors, always digging deep ditches, throwing out on the surface all the stones.

In many places I saw mounds the marmots had made from copper ore and farther north some from minerals containing wolfram and vanadium. Whenever the marmot is at the entrance of his hole, he sits up straight on his hind legs and looks like a bit of wood, a small stump or a stone. As soon as he spies a rider in the distance, he watches him with great curiosity and begins whistling sharply. This curiosity of the marmots is taken advantage of by the hunters, who sneak up to their holes flourishing streamers of cloth on the tips of long poles. The whole attention of the small animals is concentrated on this small flag and only the bullet that takes his life explains to him the reason for this previously unknown object.

I saw a very exciting picture as I passed through a marmot colony near the Orkhon River. There were thousands of holes here so that my Mongols had to use all their skill to keep the horses from breaking their legs in them. I noticed an eagle circling high overhead. All of a sudden he dropped like a stone to the top of a mound, where he sat motionless as a rock. The marmot in a few minutes ran out of his hole to a neighbor's doorway. The eagle calmly jumped down from the top and with one wing closed the entrance to the hole. The rodent heard the noise, turned back and rushed to the attack, trying to break through to his hole where he had evidently left his family. The struggle began. The eagle fought with one free wing, one leg and his beak but did not withdraw the bar to the entrance. The marmot jumped at the rapacious bird with great boldness but soon fell from a blow on the head. Only then the eagle withdrew his wing, approached the marmot, finished him off and with difficulty lifted him in his talons to carry him away to the mountains for a tasty luncheon.