I saw the same machine at Maimaichin, and learned that it was invented by the Chinese.  The Celestials of San Francisco employ it in precisely the same manner as their countrymen in Mongolia.

Beside the Chinese dwellers in Maimaichin there are many Mongol natives of the surrounding region, most of them engaged in transporting merchandise to and from the city.  I saw several trains of their little two-wheeled carts bringing tea from the southward or departing with Russian merchandise, and in one visit I encountered a drove of camels on the neutral ground.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

I have already mentioned the prevalence of feast-days, both national and personal.  During my stay in Kiachta there were several of these happy occasions, and I was told they would last the entire winter.  One man opened his house on his name’s day, and another on that of his wife.  A third received friends on the anniversary of his daughter’s birth, and a fourth had a regular house-warming.  Each kept open mansion in the forenoon and greeted all who came.  There was a grand dinner in the afternoon, followed by a soiree dansame and a supper at a late hour.  In a population like that of Kiachta there is a weekly average of at least three feast days for the entire year.  During my stay Major Boroslofski had a morning reception on the anniversary of the death of a child, but there was naturally neither dinner nor dance after it.

The dinner and dancing parties were much alike, the same company being present at all.  Even the servants were the same, there being a regular organization to conduct household festivities.  At the first dinner I attended there were about forty persons at table, all of the sterner sex.  According to the custom among Russian merchants the ladies were by themselves in another room.  Between their apartment and ours there was a large room, corresponding, as I thought, to the neutral ground between Kiachta and Maimaichin.  Doors were open, and though nobody occupied the terre neutrale during dinner, both parties retired to it at the end of the meal.

The dinner would have been a success in St. Petersburg or Paris; how much more was it a triumph on the boundary between China and Siberia.  Elegant and richly furnished apartments, expensive table ware, and a profusion of all procurable luxuries, were the attractions of the occasion.  We had apples from European Russia, three thousand miles westward, and grapes from Pekin, a thousand miles to the south.  There were liberal quantities of dried and preserved fruits, and the wines were abundant and excellent.  Of the local productions we had many substantials, till all appetites were satisfied.

According to Russian custom the host does not partake of the dinner, but is supposed to look after the welfare of his guests.  At Kiachta I found this branch of etiquette carefully observed.  Two or three times during the dinner the host passed around the entire table and filled each person’s glass with wine.  Where he found an unemptied cup he urged its drainage.