Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/74

10 covered with votive offerings, amongst which I noticed a common glass stopper. Numbers of other lesser deities (biirkhans) are ranged round the walls, which are also adorned with a variety of pictures of sacred subjects.

Besides the temples and a few Chinese houses, the remaining habitations of the Mongolian town consist of felt tents (yurtas) and little Chinese houses, each standing in its own plot of land, surrounded by a light fence. Some of these small enclosures stand in rows, so as to form a kind of street, others are grouped together without any apparent order or regularity. The market square occupies a central position; here four or five Russian merchants have opened shops and ply a retail trade, and are also engaged in the transport of tea.

The standard of value most current in Urga, as well as throughout Northern Mongolia, is brick-tea, which, for this purpose, is often sawn up into small lumps. The value of goods sold in the market and shops is reckoned by the number of bricks of tea: for instance, a sheep is worth from 12 to 15 bricks; a camel 120 to 150; a Chinese pipe from 2 to 5, and so on. Russian banknotes and silver rubles are accepted in payment by the people of Urga, and usually by all the natives of Northern Mongolia; but Chinese lans are preferred, and brick-tea is by far the most acceptable, especially among the poorer classes. Anyone, therefore, desirous of making purchases in the market, must lug about with him a sackful or cartload of heavy tea-bricks.