The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 24

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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24 : THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

These missionaries, a husband and his wife,
started out from the Chinese frontier town of Kal-
gan, where only a few weeks before the first man
that ever crossed Mongolia in a motor had been
shot by Chinese bandits. After a very rough ride
over the almost impassable Chinese roads they ar-
rived at the Great Wall which separates China
Proper from Inner Mongolia.

That which met their eyes to the North as they
stood on the summit of the mountain over which
the Great Wall has been built is thus described
by them: —

View from the Great Wall.

“Wagerly our eyes were turned northward to
search out the nature of this little known land of
Mongolia. And here the traveler is treated to a
great surprise. The mountains we have been climb-
ing all morning have only one side; for there is no
corresponding descent to the north as one would
expect. Instead, one views a vast plateau extending
as far as the eye can see. This has been a dry sum-

_ mer, even for Northern China, and we were warned
to prepare for a dusty time. We found, on the con-
' trary, green pasture lands and fields verdant with
growing crops. The yellow mustard, the blue blos-
soms of the flax, the varying shades of wheat- and
oat-fields, the darker green of the potatoes with
their white flowers, the faint pink of the buckwheat,
and the brown of the millet heads, all waving in
the breeze, gave the countryside the appearance of
a vast iridescent flower garden. There still seems
to be a good deal of ignorance in Peking and even
in Kalgan about the Mongolian Plain: After care-
ful inquiry I am convinced that the much-maligned
“Gobi dust storms’ do not have their origin in the
Mongolian Desert, but much nearer Peking.”

A Mongolian Highway.

Of the road that leads from Kalgan to Urga,
the capital of Mongolia, the missionaries give a
description which reminds one much of the roads
which our missionaries in the Black Belt of Ala-
bama must make use of : — :

“The road from Kalgan to Urga, the capital of
Mongolia, and thence to Siberia has been used for
centuries, yet it is still but a track worn across the
plain. Deeply cut with ruts during the rains, it
must often be abandoned and the worst bogs passed
around, until now the trail meanders hither and
yon. In some places the thrifty Chinese farmers
are digging deep ditches along the roadside to pre-
vent carts and automobiles from running over their

cultivated fields. Motor cars are taxed $25 for the
privilege of making this body-racking trip of seven
hundred miles to Urga. Little of this ever goes
into road improvement if one is to judge by results,
though here and there the path-has been cleared of
obstructions, and certain bridges and sections of
road are reserved for the exclusive use of cars. In
the gravel country there are long stretches of road
well drained and in such perfect condition that one
can race along at fifty miles an hour, though our

Part of an Alabama Road.

average for the day was little better than ten miles
an hour. Since the breakdown of the trans-Siberian
railway service a lucrative motor transport business
has developed over this route, in which a hundred
cars are engaged.” :
Interesting is also the paragraph about the
transportation of freight to and fro on this abom-
inable road across Inner and Outer Mongolia: —

“We looked eagerly to get our first glimpse of ©

a camel.caravan which would take our thoughts
back to the days when Marco Polo passed this way.
For a millennium these stately trains have carried,
undisputed, the treasures of the East. Now they
must give place to the motor, which makes the