Liu-san's propensity for fibbing was not always so fortunate, and he used to annoy me considerably at times by telling people that I was a man of great importance, with the object, of course, of enhancing his own. I used to see him buttonhole a grave old Turki, and tell him in a subdued whisper, with mysterious glances at me, that I was " Yâng-ta j ên," the great man Young(husband), an influential envoy from Peking, and that the utmost respect must be shown to me. Then he would pretend to be very obsequious to me, and bow and kowtow in the most servile manner. It was, hard to know whether to be angry with him or to laugh over it ; he was always so very comical about it. There would be a twinkle in his eye the whole time, and now and then, while all this was going on, he used to say to me in English (his English), " I think master belong big gentleman ; no belong small man." He thought I was a big gentleman quite off his head, though, to go wandering about in such out-of-the-way places, instead of staying comfortably at home ; and he used to say, " I think master got big heart ; Chinese mandarin no do this."
In this part of the country we used to see a great many herds of deer—the Chinese huang-yang—and the Mongol hunters have a very curious way of shooting them. They set up a long row of big stones, placed at intervals of about ten yards apart, across the usual track of the deer ; the deer, as they come along over the smooth plain, are so surprised at such an extraordinary sight that they pause and have a look at the curious phenomenon. Then the wary Mongol hunter, crouching behind one of these stones, applies the slowmatch to the flash-pan of his matchlock and shoots the nearest deer.
We passed several Mongol temples and Lamaseries, whitewashed and clean looking. On the top of a mound near one of our camping-grounds I saw a peculiar small temple or tomb, which I examined more closely ; it was a rough heap
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