The Nobles
I CAME out to Mongolia from Sweden in 1893, for the Christian Missionary Alliance of New York, and worked under their direction until 1900. I was twenty-three years old. Except for six weeks spent in England, this was my first venture away from my homeland. I settled first at Paotow, on the China border of Mongolia. Here I began to study the Mongolian language.
I could find no books from which to work, but I secured a teacher, and used the method of asking him the name of this thing and the name of that — in this way making up a vocabulary. This was not very satisfactory. I made slow progress. I wished I might learn by living where Mongol was the native tongue, but it was not easy to secure residence within Mongolia.
The Mongols are a proud people and do not encourage foreigners to settle among them.
I was attracted by what I saw of Mongolia across the border. All my life I had liked horses. I grew up with horses in Sweden. I groomed, fed, and rode them from my earliest boyhood. I longed to talk and live with these people who galloped through the streets of Paotow. I admired their free, easy grace and the jolly good nature with which they seemed to joke with each other.
I was very homesick in those days. The Mongols seemed more akin to me than any other folk near.
The whole of Mongolia then was divided into innumerable states each ruled over by a nobleman, with the power of an absolute monarch in his own territory. All these noblemen traced their right to rule back to the old days of Genghis Khan; many of them were direct descendants of Genghis’s sons.
My opportunity to enter Mongolia finally came through the courtesy of the monarch of Ordos, the state whose borders touched Paotow. I made friends first with the Chinese military official in Paotow, through his horses, and he took me with him one day when he went to call on the Prince of Ordos.
Later the Prince told the Manchu official to fetch me to the wedding festivities of his son, the Duke of Ordos.