authorities to set apart for Chinese colonization 4,500,000 desyatines (11,250,000 acres) of land in their territories, and similar territorial concessions have been made by some of the smaller Hoshuns of the western tribes. The colonization of the low-lying lands, surrounding the rivers and evaporating basins in Mongolia, for the purpose of cultivation by irrigation has been having the effect of depriving the Mongols, the original inhabitants of the country, of their most fertile valleys, and of forcing them to remain on the high grazing land throughout the year.
Thus it is everywhere apparent that within recent years the Chinese authorities have been making great efforts to bring Mongolia more directly under Peking, and to stamp out all embers of Mongolian local autonomy and national life. The last effort of the tottering Manchu dynasty was an abortive attempt to consolidate the empire. Everywhere the Mongol khans and Chinese officials were in a sort of political union with one another, and the combined tyranny of both, assisted by that of the Buddhist Lamas, was crushing the Mongol tribes under a serfdom which recalled the days of mediæval Europe. But the Mongol khans themselves, although to some extent in league with the Chinese officials and dependent for their powers upon them, have been viewing with grave alarm the Chinese economic and military expansion in their territories and the colonization of their best lands. They regard these movements naturally as an attack upon their historical autonomous rights and a menace to the existence of the Mongols as a race. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many of the Mongol khans
