Our camels were trudging to a slow but steady measure on toward thenorth. We were making twenty-five to thirty miles a day as weapproached a small monastery that lay to the left of our route. Itwas in the form of a square of large buildings surrounded by a highfence of thick poles. Each side had an opening in the middleleading to the four entrances of the temple in the center of thesquare. The temple was built with the red lacquered columns andthe Chinese style roofs and dominated the surrounding low dwellingsof the Lamas. On the opposite side of the road lay what appearedto be a Chinese fortress but which was in reality a tradingcompound or dugun, which the Chinese always build in the form of afortress with double walls a few feet apart, within which theyplace their houses and shops and usually have twenty or thirtytraders fully armed for any emergency. In case of need theseduguns can be used as blockhouses and are capable of withstandinglong sieges. Between the dugun and the monastery and nearer to theroad I made out the camp of some nomads. Their horses and cattlewere nowhere to be seen. Evidently the Mongols had stopped herefor some time and had left their cattle in the mountains. Overseveral yurtas waved multi-colored triangular flags, a sign of thepresence of disease. Near some yurtas high poles were stuck intothe ground with Mongol caps at their tops, which indicated that thehost of the yurta had died. The packs of dogs wandering over theplain showed that the dead bodies lay somewhere near, either in theravines or along the banks of the river.

As we approached the camp, we heard from a distance the franticbeating of drums, the mournful sounds of the flute and shrill, madshouting. Our Mongol went forward to investigate for us andreported that several Mongolian families had come here to themonastery to seek aid from the Hutuktu Jahansti who was famed forhis miracles of healing. The people were stricken with leprosy andblack smallpox and had come from long distances only to find thatthe Hutuktu was not at the monastery but had gone to the LivingBuddha in Urga. Consequently they had been forced to invite thewitch doctors. The people were dying one after another. Just theday before they had cast on the plain the twenty-seventh man.

Meanwhile, as we talked, the witch doctor came out of one of theyurtas. He was an old man with a cataract on one eye and with aface deeply scarred by smallpox. He was dressed in tatters withvarious colored bits of cloth hanging down from his waist. Hecarried a drum and a flute. We could see froth on his blue lipsand madness in his eyes. Suddenly he began to whirl round anddance with a thousand prancings of his long legs and writhings ofhis arms and shoulders, still beating the drum and playing theflute or crying and raging at intervals, eve............