Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/70

58 With the branch line in shape to transport the materials, we shortly began the construction of the new brick oven. The work went quickly and well, thanks to the skilful Chinese workmen whom Tung Ho Shan had sent me from Harbin.

Taking advantage of our proximity to the forests, I often went hunting. A young Cossack, Rikoff, who was a fine woodsman and a tireless walker, always accompanied me, and together we tramped a large part of the neighbouring country. In the course of these excursions we crossed the timber-covered divide and entered the valley of the Mutan, which flows northward to join the Sungari at Sansing. Along the river we found some villages of the Daour Manchus on the left bank and those of the Tungutzes on the right. We remarked the interesting fact that, though the Manchus were quite like the Chinese in appearance and, in fact, indistinguishable from them in the eyes of the ordinary observer, the Tungutzes had retained their markedly different racial appearance. These latter had long been a tribe of hunters and warriors, whose forbears in past centuries had caused the masters of Peking more than once to scan timorously the northern boundary, when rumours came of movements in the camps and villages of these Tungutzes tribes.

These inhabitants of the Mutan villages were big broad-shouldered men, quick and skilful of movement and proud, calm and distinctly friendly in bearing. The villages seemed poor and gave one more the impression of ruins than of habitable houses, and this in spite of the fact that within these houses whole fortunes were gathered in the form of sable, skunk, marten, ermine, fox and squirrel skins, which were the spoils of their hunts