Page:Ossendowski - Beasts, Men and Gods.djvu/279

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BEFORE THE FACE OF BUDDHA
263

of the Bogdo, the Buriat Prince Djam Bolon. I shall describe these visits in Part IV.

Baron Ungern organized the trip for me and my party to the shore of the Pacific. We were to go on camels to northern Manchuria, because there it was easy to avoid cavilling with the Chinese authorities so badly oriented in the international relationship with Poland. Having sent a letter from Uliassutai to the French Legation at Peking and bearing with me a letter from the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, expressing thanks for the saving of Uliassutai from a pogrom, I intended to make for the nearest station on the Chinese Eastern Railway and from there proceed to Peking. The Danish merchant E. V. Olufsen was to have traveled out with me and also a learned Lama Turgut, who was headed for China.

Never shall I forget the night of May 19th to 20th of 1921! After dinner Baron Ungern proposed that we go to the yurta of Djam Bolon, whose acquaintance I had made on the first day after my arrival in Urga. His yurta was placed on a raised wooden platform in a compound located behind the Russian settlement. Two Buriat officers met us and took us in. Djam Bolon was a man of middle age, tall and thin with an unusually long face. Before the Great War he had been a simple shepherd but had fought together with Baron Ungern on the German front and afterwards against the Bolsheviki. He was a Grand Duke of the Buriats, the successor of former Buriat kings who had been dethroned by the Russian Government after their attempt to establish the Independence of the Buriat people. The servants brought