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Page 43

It is a good sign if the dogs eat the corpse; the relations of the dead mongol come to inspect after a few days.  If the dogs have not touched the body, it is a sign that the mongol was such a bad egg that even the dogs would not eat him up.  Near the big monasteries, for instance in Urga, there is a hill where the dead lamas are thrown out, that place is haunted by half-wild dogs.  [[underlined]] There are thousands of skulls lying about, [[/underlined]] for the skulls keep intact the longest.  Even at daytime, it is not safe to go near the place even on horse-back, for the mongolian dogs are worse than even wolves.  Each Jurta has a number of dogs watching the place and when a guest arrives on horseback, for no mongol would walk more than 10 yards on foot, he yells out to the women of the Jurta to come out to tie up the dogs first before he dismounts from his pony.  The worst of these devils is that they do not bark; they simply make straight for you.  I nearly got caught once when my motor car stopped not very far from a Mongolian Jurta.  Fortunately my chauffeur saw a couple of these big brutes coming like greased lightning [[strikethrough]] coming [[/strikethrough]] for me [[strikethrough]] , [[/strikethrough]] as I stood alongside of the car and he yelled out to me to jump for the car which I promptly did without even inquiring for the reason.  It has happened in the middle of winter, that a pack of dogs have pulled a mongol from his pony and ate him up alive just outside [[strikethrough]] of [[/strikethrough]] Urga.  Because they are the scavengers of the place and eat up the dead, the mongols do not touch them, they are sort of holy animals.  The lamas feed the dogs which are hanging round the monasteries every night.  I have watched in the streets of Urga, when a dog died on the road that some mongol lama came along to revive him by giving him water to drink.  When the dog was definitely dead, they took some paper and put it under the dog in order to burn the fur of the dog so as to prevent any Chinese from coming along to skin the dog and sell the same.  The thick hair of the mongol dogs in winter make a very fine warm fur.  When you are surrounded by mongolian dogs , the only way to prevent them from rushing at you is to squat down and strange to say no mongolian dog will attack