very poor Kalmucks. The rich pastures and flocks belong to the former, while the latter are relegated to the less fertile tracts, which they cultivate without gaining a sufficiency. These Kalmucks are certainly not taking in appearance. They are frail, badly fed, badly housed, badly clad, and have a placid rather than an energetic and intelligent air. Nevertheless, they have for some time been entrusted with the defence of the country, and they must not leave the place assigned to them without asking permission from their chief. They are not only bound to the soil, but are liable to be requisitioned for police or orderly duty, and must have in readiness the sabre, the flint-lock gun, or the bow. Their "banners," to the number of twenty, distributed over the Tien Shan, play more or less the same part as those families which in Austria were established in the south of the empire in the region of the "military frontiers," as they were styled. Their neighbours do not appear to hold them in high esteem, for a Kirghis to whom I observed how mild a physiognomy these Mongols have, replied with a laugh—
"That is true. They are as mild as cows."
"In what way?"
"Because they can be milked without any trouble."
It appears that the Kirghis, who are daring, well armed, and unscrupulous, do not think twice about cheating and pillaging these Mongols. As the plunderers are Mussulmans, they can easily settle matters with their consciences, seeing that the victims are Buddhists, that is to say, people who have no "book," neither a Bible nor a Koran, and so are of no account.
The Chinese authorities intervene but rarely to mete out justice to those who are aggrieved; the offenders are nearly always out of reach in the mountains, where they find it so easy to hide, and then again it is easy, in this case, to obtain from their family or tribe either a tax which may be in arrears or a present which in ordinary times would be withheld. But when
