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 CHAPTER XV

THE MARCH OF GHOSTS

N no other way can I describe the journey from the River Ero to the border of Tibet. About eleven hundred miles through the snowy steppes, over mountains and across deserts we traveled in forty-eight days. We hid from the people as we journeyed, made short stops in the most desolate places, fed for whole weeks on nothing but raw, frozen meat in order to avoid attracting attention by the smoke of fires. Whenever we needed to purchase a sheep or a steer for our supply department, we sent out only two unarmed men who represented to the natives that they were the workmen of some Russian colonists. We even feared to shoot, although we met a great herd of antelopes numbering as many as five thousand head. Behind Balir in the lands of the Lama Jassaktu Khan, who had inherited his throne as a result of the poisoning of his brother at Urga by order of the Living Buddha, we met wandering Russian Tartars who had driven their herds all the way from Altai and Abakan. They welcomed us very cordially, gave us oxen and thirty-six bricks of tea. Also they saved us from inevitable destruction, for they told us that at this season it was utterly impossible for horses to make the trip across the Gobi, where there was no grass at all. We must buy camels by exchanging for