We had not proceeded very far before we were most annoyingly stopped by a watercourse. We feared that its covering of ice was too fragile to bear us, and, on the other hand, it was apparently too treacherous to admit of our sounding it. After my adventures on Lake Baikal, I was quite prepared to trust myself over this ice without much hesitation, but, seeing the apprehensions of M. Marine and the driver, I became timid, and yielded to them.
We got out of the tarantass; M. Marine and I first went across on foot, and then the driver, after starting the horses at a gallop, followed us. The resistance of the ice was just sufficient, and the next day, probably, we could not have crossed, for the ice even now split under the weight, spurting up the compressed water everywhere through the inauspicious fissures.
We still had a mountain to ascend before arriving at Urga, and as our jaded horses crept up with difficulty, we got down to relieve them. Our attention was at once attracted by the picturesqueness of the scenery. As we advanced, the valleys around us coming into view, deepened in shadow and narrowed in width; the crests of the overhanging mountains were beginning to catch the first rays of the rising sun, and fascinated us with their luminous splendour. It called up, in my memory, my former excursions in the Alps and the Pyrenees. I loitered on my way musingly for some time, and tried to abstract my thoughts from actuality; from the perils of my adventure, the remoteness from my friends, and indulged in the illusion that I had before my eyes the snowy cap of Mont Blanc or the Maladetta. But this attractive imagery was soon rudely dispelled by the sight of two or three Mongolian tents on the summit of the hill we had to ascend. These were too forcibly suggestive of the first encampment I had visited to permit me to indulge any longer in a day-dream that I was so near my home. We resumed our places in the tarantass, and our descent of the mountain, across snow-pits and boggy spots, in the absence of any roadway whatever, kept us in perpetual alarm. The valley into which we descended, was strewn with huge stones, and we could not proceed, even at a snail’s pace, without being tossed with fearful joltings. This wearying movement lasted five or six hours, and M. Marine became quite exhausted and alarmingly pale from the effects. Towards one in the afternoon, we perceived a grand lamasery gracefully rising on the slope of a mountain, and, in another hour, we at last arrived at Urga, the capital of Mongolia.