Viewing page 118 of 155

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Page 49.

[[strikethrough]] vie [[/strikethrough]] travel a 100 miles when the motor stopped.  It turned out that the metal pipe through which the gasoline runs into the motor was broken.  It had been soldered before, but had come loose again.  I told the chauffeur to take out his soldering lamp and repair the damage but he had not got one.  We were puzzled what to do.  I told the man to connect the ends with a piece of rubber tube and as he did not have one, we cut off a piece from the air pump connected the two ends of the pipe, tore up a handkerchief and tied that round the whole thing to keep the rubber from sl^[[ipp]]ing and with this marvel of repair work we travelled another 400 miles.  When we got to our destination, I suggested to the chauffeur that he should now solder the pipe, but he said "Nichewo, it has lasted so far and stuck so nicely, we should certainly get to Urga anyhow.^[["]]  He was too lazy to borrow a soldering lamp to make this small repair.  That was a bad luck trip anyhow.  On the second night we lay down as usual alon^[[g]]side the motor car to sleep and I was a little worried already because there was some clouds in the sky.  Really at 10 o'clock it started raining.  The first thing you have to do is pack up your bedding and put it under the rain-proof cloth in the car, if you get wet, it's not so bad, as if your things get wet.  We sat alongside of the car all night, getting wetter and wetter and when the day dawned, we were wet to the skin.  I had some Chinese with me and they asked whether I had any brandy to warm us up, but we did not even have that.  So we took out the bag with Argal (dried cowdung) from under the luggage, because you have to keep that stuff dry, no matter what gets wet and under the car started a small fire to warm some rice soup.  In the cold morning wind, it was so cold in the wet clothes that our hands shook, when we held the rice bowl.  Then we faced the problem shall we try to move on or stay just where we are. We came to the conclusion that we better try to move as the rain did not look like [[strikethrough]] stopp [[/strikethrough]]