The merchants were courteous and appeared to have plenty of time at command.  They brought sweetmeats, confectionery, and tea, in fact the latter article was always ready.  They gave us crystalized sugar, resembling rock candy, for sweetening purposes, but themselves drank tea without sugar or milk.  They offered us pipes for smoking, and in a few instances Russian cigarettes.  I found the Chinese tobacco very feeble and the pipes of limited capacity.  It is doubtless owing to the weakness of their tobacco that they can smoke so continuously.  The pipe is in almost constant requisition, the operator swallowing the smoke and emitting it in a double stream through his nostrils.  They rarely offered us Chinese wine, as that article is repugnant to any but Celestials.  Sometimes they brought sherry and occasionally champagne.

[Illustration:  THROUGH ORDINARY EYES.]

I was interested in studying the decorations on window screens and fans, and the various devices on the walls.  The Chinese mind runs to the hideous in nearly everything fanciful, and most of its works of art abound in griffins and dragons.  Even the portrait of a tiger or other wild beast is made to look worse than the most savage of his tribe.  If there ever was a dog with a mouth such as the Chinese artists represent on their canines, he could walk down his own throat with very little difficulty.

[Illustration:  THROUGH CHINESE EYES]

The language spoken in the intercourse of Russians and Chinese at Kiachta is a mongrel tongue in which Russian predominates.  It is a ‘pigeon-Russian’ exactly analagous to the ‘pigeon English’ of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and San Francisco.  The Chinese at Maimaichin can reckon in Russian and understand the rudiments of that language very well.  I observed at Maimaichin, as at San Francisco, the tendency to add an ‘o’ sound to monosyllabic consonant words.  A Chinese merchant grew familiar during one of my visits, and we exchanged lingual lessons and cards.  He held up a tea-spoon and asked me its name.  I tried him repeatedly with ‘spoon,’ but he would pronounce it ‘spoonee’ in spite of my instructions.  When I gave him a card and called it such, he pronounced it ‘cardee.’  His name was Chy-Ping-Tong, or something of the kind, but I was no more able to speak it correctly than was he to say ‘spoon.’  He wrote his name in my note-book and I wrote mine in his.  Beyond the knowledge of possessing chirographic specimens of another language, neither party is wiser.

Whoever has visited St. Petersburg or Moscow has doubtless seen the abacus, or calculating machine used in Russian shops.  It is found throughout the empire from the German frontier to Bering’s Straits, not only in the hands of merchants but in many private houses.  It consists of a wooden frame ordinarily a foot long and six inches wide.  There are ten metal wires strung across this frame, and ten balls of wood on each wire.  The Russian currency is a decimal one, and by means of this machine computations are carried on with wonderful rapidity.  I have seen numbers added by a boy and a machine faster than a New York bank teller could make the same reckoning.  It requires long practice to become expert in its use, but when once learned it is preferred by all merchants, whether native or foreign.