Viewing page 43 of 155

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Page 16.

other eye was watching the road.  If it had been a broad wide road it would have been O.K., but the darned road was winding down hill and just wide enough for our car to pass any ox for pony caravan coming up the mountain.  Sometimes just when we were rounding a corner, we met a caravan coming uphill, they naturally stuck to the side nearest the mountain and our car had to take the outside edge.  Caravan ponies and oxen are not the quietest animals in the world when they meet a huge motor car with bright searchlights whizzing pass them in the dusk and we had several narrow shaves before we reached the rest house.  The outer border of the road is lined with white poles, to show the way in the night.  On top of one of the mountains there were 3 poles missing and I asked the chauffeur the reason why.  Oh! he said a few days ago a chauffeur was not as careful as I am, and shot down the side of the mountain, he believed, that there were 3 people killed and that the car with the driver was still at the bottom of the mountain.

Camping in one room with 42 Mongols in a rest house is not ideal, during the night two men nearly killed each other over a fight about a kettle of boiling water for tea.  We got to Troiskosavsk the next noon and I must say, I was not sorry to part with the careful driver.  Although the scenery over the snow covered mountains was very pretty, I was glad to get off the car.  Troiskosavsk is a dead town, formerly there was a very flourishing trade going on there from Mongolia to Russia and visa versa, but now the place is absolutely dead.  Coming into Troiskosavsk you pass a small church, but that is closed up now, the windows are nailed up and the door locked.

Having travelled too fast for my taste so far, I was rather glad when a Russian Chauffeur told me in Troiskosavsk that the road to Werchne-Udinsk was very bad, too much snow and that it would not be advisable for me to travel by motor car.  We might get stuck in the snow, away from any station and to stay outside during the night at 40 degrees cold would be a bit too
     

Transcription Notes:
Paragraph 1, lines 5-6: "caravan coming" is typewritten as one word, with a handwritten line inserted to indicate they should be two words. Paragraph 3, line 1: "so far" is typewritten as one word, with a handwritten line inserted between to indicated they should be two words.