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of the Prince. Our guide rode on ahead for the parley with him after assuring us
that the Prince would be glad to welcome the Ta Lama, though at the time I
remarked great anxiety and fear in his features as he spoke. Before long we
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Beasts, Men and Gods, by Ferdinand Ossendowski
emerged on to a large plain well covered with small bushes. Down by the shore of
the river we made out big yurtas with yellow and blue flags floating over them and
easily guessed that this was the seat of government. Soon our guide returned to
us. His face was wreathed with smiles. He flourished his hands and cried:
"Noyon (the Prince) asks you to come! He is very glad!"
From a warrior I was forced to change myself into a diplomat. As we approached
the yurta of the Prince, we were met by two officials, wearing the peaked Mongol
caps with peacock feathers rampants behind. With low obeisances they begged
the foreign "Noyon" to enter the yurta. My friend the Tartar and I entered. In the
rich yurta draped with expensive silk we discovered a feeble, wizen-faced little old
man with shaven face and cropped hair, wearing also a high pointed beaver cap
with red silk apex topped off with a dark red button with the long peacock feathers
streaming out behind. On his nose were big Chinese spectacles. He was sitting
on a low divan, nervously clicking the beads of his rosary. This was Ta Lama,
Prince of Soldjak and High Priest of the Buddhist Temple. He welcomed us very
cordially and invited us to sit down before the fire burning in the copper brazier.
His surprisingly beautiful Princess served us with tea and Chinese confections
and cakes. We smoked our pipes, though the Prince as a Lama did not indulge,
fulfilling, however, his duty as a host by raising to his lips the pipes we offered him
and handing us in return the green nephrite bottle of snuff. Thus with the etiquette
accomplished we awaited the words of the Prince. He inquired whether our travels
had been felicitous and what were our further plans. I talked with him quite frankly
and requested his hospitality for the rest of our company and for the horses. He
agreed immediately and ordered four yurtas set up for us.
"I hear that the foreign Noyon," the Prince said, "is a good doctor."
"Yes, I know some diseases and have with me some medicines," I answered, "but
I am not a doctor. I am a scientist in other branches."
But the Prince did not understand this. In his simple directness a man who knows
how to treat disease is a doctor.
"My wife has had constant trouble for two months with her eyes," he announced.
"Help her."
I asked the Princess to show me her eyes and I found the typical conjunctivitis
from the continual smoke of the yurta and the general uncleanliness. The Tartar
brought me my medicine case. I washed her eyes with boric acid and dropped a
little cocaine and a feeble solution of sulphurate of zinc into them.
"I beg you to cure me," pleaded the Princess. "Do not go away until you have
cured me. We shall give you sheep, milk and flour for all your company. I weep
now very often because I had very nice eyes and my husband used to tell me they
shone like the stars and now they are red. I cannot bear it, I cannot!"
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She very capriciously stamped her foot and, coquettishly smiling at me, asked:
"Do you want to cure me? Yes?"
The character and manners of lovely woman are the same everywhere: on bright
Broadway, along the stately Thames, on the vivacious boulevards of gay Paris
and in the silk-draped yurta of the Soyot Princess behind the larch covered Tannu
Ola.
"I shall certainly try," assuringly answered the new oculist.
We spent here ten days, surrounded by the kindness and friendship of the whole
family of the Prince. The eyes of the Princess, which eight years ago had seduced
the already old Prince Lama, were now recovered. She was beside herself with
joy and seldom left her looking-glass.
The Prince gave me five fairly good horses, ten sheep and a bag of flour, which
was immediately transformed into dry bread. My friend presented him with a
Romanoff five-hundred-rouble note with a picture of Peter the Great upon it, while
I gave to him a small nugget of gold which I had picked up in the bed of a stream.
The Prince ordered one of the Soyots to guide us to the Kosogol. The whole
family of the Prince conducted us to the monastery ten kilometres from the
"capital." We did not visit the monastery but we stopped at the "Dugun," a
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