A number of men hang about the horse-fair who act as brokers between buyers and sellers. These men are invariably Chinese. They soon attached themselves to us, offering their services, and descanting on the merits of the various steeds that were constantly scouring past us. Their mode of making and receiving offers is to pull their long sleeves down and communicate with each other by the touch of the fingers. This seems to be more of a traditional ceremony than anything else, for when they have made a bid with so much show of secrecy, they frequently continue the bargaining _vivâ voce_ in the hearing of the whole multitude. The prices of the ponies sold varied from five taels to twenty, or say from thirty shillings to six guineas. We had occasion to make some purchases, and paid about ten taels each for very good useful ponies. One of mine that I had brought from Tientsin had got a very bad sore back from the last day's ride with a badly fitting saddle. He was useless to me in that condition, and I sold him to a horsedealer for five taels.
Large droves of cattle and sheep came in from Mongolia, but the sale of these is not carried on with so much ostentation as that of the horses.
We daily, almost hourly, observed long strings of ox-carts coming down through the pass loaded with short square logs of soft wood. The carts are of the roughest description, and have not, I think, a bit of iron in their construction. This wood is brought from the mountains near Urga, across the desert of Gobi, a distance of 600 miles, and is chiefly used in the manufacture of coffins by the Chinese. These ox caravans travel very slowly, a journey of 600 miles occupying forty days or more; but it is a cheap and convenient mode of conveyance. The animals feed themselves on the way, and cost very little to start with. Camels could do the work, but a camel is a wretched object in harness, and is quite unable to drag even a light cart through a steep pass. Horses or oxen have to do this work for them. The pass at Chan-kia-kow is very stony for some fifteen miles, and the oxen have to be shod with thin iron plates. The Chinese farriers at Chan-kia-kow are very expert at shoeing cattle and horses. They don't attempt to make a shoe to fit any particular hoof, but keep a stock on hand, and selecting the nearest size, they hammer the shoe approximately to the shape of the hoof. They don't trouble themselves to cut the hoof down much, and you can have your beast shod on all four feet in a remarkably short time.