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Page 18.

You really cannot help admiring the sturdy little buriat horses which were pulling my sledge.  It was a Troika, one horse trotting in the centre and one galloping at the side.  In that cold climate they can gallop two to three hours on a stretch, their hot breath gets frozen in no time and the driver has to wipe their nostrils every now and then to knock off the icicles which have formed.  At night they are simply left standing outside in the bitter cold.  All their feed is chopped straw and a handful of oats with a bucket of water.  The driver at the end of the journey asked me not to give him any money as wages but to pay him with goods.  He got my sheepskin coat, my warm felt boots and my gloves, I also gave him a woollen shawl, all these things he appreciated much more than money, for none of these things which I gave him could be bought in Werchne-Udinsk.

Urga consists of three parts, the Russian, the Mongolian and the Chinese parts.  The Russian houses are built mostly in the Siberian style of wood and clay, the mongols during the winter months also live in Russian houses and the Chinese have quite a big quarter to themselves consisting of typically Chinese houses.

Urga is situated in a large valley surrounded by high mountains, in the north, west and east.  In the south there is a big plain through which runs the [[underlined]] River Tola, [[/underlined]] the water supply of Urga.  After the severe cold of the winter living in the town appears too hot for the average mongol.  The first sign of spring is that the mongol takes off his sleeve and bares his arm, that means that very shortly the mongols will be leaving their town houses and put up their jurtas and tents on the plain by the river.  The Chinese quarters are now practically deserted, the old trading firms who had their head-quarters there for centuries have all closed up now, trade being a purely Russian-mongolian monopoly.  During the last few years a brick factory has been started by the government and a big number of houses have been built for the [[strikethrough]] diffe-ren [[/strikethrough]] different government offices.  Urga looks very picturesque, there are a lot of [[underlined]] Lama Monasteries [[/underlined]] all over the town which look very 

Transcription Notes:
The "m" in "mongol" and "mongolian" have three lines under them, which is an editorial mark to capitalize them, but I left them in lower-case as written.--thomasc