crossed the Burgut Mountains, we entered the Tola River valley, farther up which Urga is located.  The road was strewn with the overcoats, shirts, boots, caps and kettles which the Chinese had thrown away in their flight; and marked by many of their dead.  Further on the road crossed a morass, where on either side lay great mounds of the dead bodies of men, horses and camels with broken carts and military debris of every sort.  Here the Tibetans of Baron Ungern had cut up the escaping Chinese baggage transport; and it was a strange and gloomy contrast to see the piles of dead besides the effervescing awakening life of spring.  In every pool wild ducks of different kinds floated about; in the high grass the cranes performed their weird dance of courtship; on the lakes great flocks of swans and geese were swimming; through the swampy places like spots of light moved the brilliantly colored pairs of the Mongolian sacred bird, the turpan or “Lama goose”; on the higher dry places flocks of wild turkey gamboled and fought as they fed; flocks of the salga partridge whistled by; while on the mountain side not far away the wolves lay basking and turning in the lazy warmth of the sun, whining and occasionally barking like playful dogs.

Nature knows only life.  Death is for her but an episode whose traces she rubs out with sand and snow or ornaments with luxuriant greenery and brightly colored bushes and flowers.  What matters it to Nature if a mother at Chefoo or on the banks of the Yangtse offers her bowl of rice with burning incense at some shrine and prays for the return of her son that has fallen unknown for all time on the plains along the Tola, where his bones will dry beneath the rays of Nature’s dissipating fire and be scattered by her winds over the sands of the prairie?  It is splendid, this indifference of Nature to death, and her greediness for life!

On the fourth day we made the shores of the Tola well after nightfall.  We could not find the regular ford and I forced my camel to enter the stream in the attempt to make a crossing without guidance.  Very fortunately I found a shallow, though somewhat miry, place and we got over all right.  This is something to be thankful for in fording a river with a camel; because, when your mount finds the water too deep, coming up around his neck, he does not strike out and swim like a horse will do but just rolls over on his side and floats, which is vastly inconvenient for his rider.  Down by the river we pegged our tent.

Fifteen miles further on we crossed a battlefield, where the third great battle for the independence of Mongolia had been fought.  Here the troops of Baron Ungern clashed with six thousand Chinese moving down from Kiakhta to the aid of Urga.  The Chinese were completely defeated and four thousand prisoners taken.  However, these surrendered Chinese tried to escape during the night.  Baron Ungern sent the Transbaikal Cossacks and Tibetans in pursuit of them and it was their work which we saw on this field