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Page [[strikethrough]] 20 [[/strikethrough]] 19.-

pretty with [[underlined]] their white and blue walls with golden roofs. [[/strikethrough]] In the centre of the town used to be the meat market, the horse market the iron market and different kinds of shops that have all been monopolised since the government has taken over every kind of trade.  The streets of Urga used to be very dirty, just mud roads, impassable when it rained, every few steps you found a dead dog or some other dead animal lying about, but things have improved a little bit in later years.  It was very amusing when the Mongols first got civilization.  Formerly the Mongols used the streets as their W.C. but when the Chinese garrison left, and the Mongols set up their own government, they erected small wooden houses as W.C. at the street corner and fined any Mongol who got caught sitting in the street.  That nearly led to a revolution.  The mongols said, the Chinese suppressed us, but we could do what we liked just the same and now, when we have our own government, we cannot do even the small thing without getting fined.  The result was that the government did not carry this law through very strictly, the wood of the little houses was slowly carried away and nobody bothered about the matter anymore.

I once had occasion to visit the jail.  Things have changed considerably since the Chinese ruled, when a Mongolian prison had nothing to laugh at.  In the court room was hanging on the wall a [[strikethrough]] letter [[/strikethrough]] ^[[leather]] shoe sole, a bamboo, and a whip with [[strikethrough]] letter [[/strikethrough]] ^[[leather]] throngs.  The [[strikethrough]] letter [[/strikethrough]] ^[[leather]] sole was used to smack the prisoner's cheeks till they are swollen.  With the bamboo the prisoner got beatings on his bare feet soles and with the whip they belaboured the bare back.  But that was nothing compared to the prison sentences.  The prisoner was placed and locked up in a coffin too small for him to lie down flat.  There was a hole at the top and at the side through which the jailer passed some food to the prisoner.  These coffins were placed on shelves in a cellar in darkness, of course, not heated in the icy winters.  It is surprising and says a lot for the constitution of the Mongols that they survived this kind of imprisonment for years.  This kind of punishment has been stopped by the present government.  [[strikethrough]] The only punishment [[/strikethrough]]