CHAPTER III.

Festival of the Loaves of the Moon—Entertainment in a Mongol tent—Toolholos, or Rhapsodists of Tartary—Invocation to Timour—Tartar Education—Industry of the Women—Mongols in quest of missing animals—Remains of an abandoned City—Road from Peking to Kiaktha—Commerce between China and Russia—Russian Convent at Peking—A Tartar solicits us to cure his Mother from a dangerous Illness—Tartar Physicians—The intermittent Fever Devil—Various forms of Sepulture in use among the Mongols—Lamasery of the Five Towers—Obsequies of the Tartar Kings—Origin of the kingdom of Efe—Gymnastic Exercises of the Tartars—Encounter with three Wolves—Mongol Carts.

We arrived at Chaborté on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, the anniversary of great rejoicings among the Chinese.  This festival, known as the Yué-Ping (Loaves of the Moon), dates from the remotest antiquity.  Its original purpose was to honour the moon with superstitious rites.  On this solemn day, all labour is suspended; the workmen receive from their employers a present of money; every person puts on his best clothes; and there is merrymaking in every family.  Relations and friends interchange cakes of various sizes, on which is stamped the image of the moon; that is to say, a hare crouching amid a small group of trees.

Since the fourteenth century, this festival has borne a political p. 62character, little understood, apparently, by the Mongols; but the tradition of which is carefully preserved by the Chinese.  About the year 1368, the Chinese were desirous of shaking off the yoke of Tartar dynasty, fou