IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Across Asia : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
C. G. MANNERHEIM
the age of i t. When it reaches the age of i 2, the child is given a name chosen from his books by a lama.
The Yögurs made a considerably better impression on me than the Kalmuks and Torguts. It is easier to make yourself understood by them. They are quite lively and bright, often think they have grasped a half-formed sentence and interrupt you with an answer before you have had time to finish your question. They show great interest and easily understand the use of objects that they have not seen before. The Thumu had an almost phenomenal gift of recognising sounds in foreign languages. When I asked the names of various objects through my interpreter, he amused himself by giving them the same names that he heard me pronounce in Russian. Curiously enough, he pronounced them correctly in most cases without being put off by the long Chinese sentence which the interpreter frequently addressed to him. He was much amused by this joke and by my surprise, when he pronounced some difficult word. Occasionally he would preface the Yögur verb that I wanted to know, by my title »ta jen», making up absurd sentences, such as »the to jen nurses his child» etc., which amused him immensely. In general they are very fond of joking.
Judging by the livestock I saw at the Thumu's, at the monastery and in neighbouring tents, it is good. The cattle consisted chiefly of yak cows, grey and black, either with or without horns. Their size varied very much, some being real prize-cattle. Their milk is thicker than that of ordinary cows. The sheep, I thought, were larger than in the Tian Shan mountains and had ordinary tails, not fat-tailed. The horses were very small — many of them were knock-kneed. The dogs were chiefly of the Tangut breed, large, dark brown, long-haired, fine animals. I was unable to draw up any statistics concerning the livestock and the information I obtained was very unreliable. It seemed that they had suffered considerably in a material sense, especially in regard to their livestock, during the last Dungan revolt and had been unable to regain their former prosperity.
It was almost with feelings of regret that I parted to-day from my hospitable hosts and the little cottage embedded among the grassy hills. All the men had collected round the horses to bid me farewell. One held my horse, another the stirrup, a third gave me a helping shove into the saddle, while a fourth waited on the other side to prevent my overbalancing. The ladies were conspicuous by their absence. As I rode past the flocks of sheep, I saw them busy at work. I reined in my horse and shouted a loud »tshuava» and »suja» (thanks and goodbye) which seemed to please them.
The gorge of the Kluadjek gol opened at a short distance from the Thumu's house into another, Mör gol. There were traces of water at the bottom, though now the gorge was dry. We followed it in a NNW and N direction. The gorge is very narrow and the grassy sides were fairly steep. A little higher up the surface of the rock was laid bare in most places. We travelled for a short distance between fairly high hills, but soon the hills on both sides became small. Some side-gorges with water channels, dry at present, debouched into the one we were traversing. After riding for 5 miles we took a NNE course. The water channel now grew more considerable and some patches of ice were visible. About 21/2
)472(
January 2nd, 1908. The town of Li Yuan.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.