DZUNGARIA
404
certainly have flowed out through this hollow, and joined the Irtish some eighty miles farther to the north-
west.
Travelling westwards as rapidly as our well-laden
camels permitted, we arrived, three days after leaving our camp near Ulungur, at the Kobuk Valley. The Sair
Mountains, rising on the north to an altitude of ft., supplied ample water, which irrigated the
12,000
Kobuk
pastures before running to waste in the deserts Here we found a large community of
to the south.
locality' which, since the recorded history, has been a desirable camping-ground. The story of the Torguts of the Kobuk steppe, and of their migration from the far west has been
Torgut Mongols inhabiting a earliest daj^s of
given in a previous chapter, and their past condition, there described, present.
decidedly more interesting than their
is
Exceptional dirt and disease
— degenerates made
to deal with
it
;
is
—even for Mongol
objectionable people most probable that at no very distant
these
date, the fast-increasing Kirghiz or Kasak tribes will encroach on their territory to the lasting detriment of the Torguts.
There was an
air of settled life amongst the people Kobuk, for the yurts clustered in closely packed groups round the Buddhist temple and the residence
of the
of their Chief.
We
observed attempts being
made
to
and the yurts frequently possessed a "kraal" or enclosure close by, in which they kept their flocks and a supply of hay for the winter's use. The temple and its precincts, together with the abode of the Chief, composed a block of buildings. The Chief, who held the title of Wang, was the hereditary ruler of
cultivate the
—
soil,
—
the tribe, and, although the possessor of a house built