ourselves with 4,000 prepared cartridges for these guns; besides which we had 13 revolvers, 2 Remington pistols, a double-barrelled Lancaster rifle, and four shot-guns, for which we carried 2½ cwt. of shot and 4 cwt. of gunpowder.
These constituted our fighting and sporting equipment. In every other respect we were obliged to stint ourselves as far as possible, owing to our limited means. To cover some of the expenses of outfit and provide for the continuation of our journey, I travelled to Tien-tsin,[1] where I bought sundry small merchandise to the amount of 80l., which I hoped to sell at a good profit at Ala-shan. After all these purchases had been completed, we had only 87 lans (about 22l.) left in our pockets at the time of our departure from Kalgan.
The personnel of our expedition was now reorganised. The two Cossacks who had accompanied us during the first year proved to be untrustworthy, and suffered so dreadfully from home-sickness that I determined to dismiss them and procure others instead. My two new travelling companions were selected from the detachment stationed at Urga, and, fortunately for us, proved most devoted, efficient, and zealous coadjutors during the whole of our long journey. One was a Russian youth, aged 19, named Pamphile Chebayeff, the other a Buriat, Dondok Irinchinoff We soon struck up a close friendship with these good men, which eminently
- ↑ Tien-tsin is a little over 66 miles in an easterly direction from Peking; and is situated near the mouth of the Peiho, by which river seagoing steamers of a moderate size ascend as far as that town.
