live exclusively on millet porridge. At length I shot a pygarg, and when the Mongols saw they could not starve us out, they began selling us butter and milk.
We obtained very few specimens of birds; indeed since we left Kalgan, this branch of our researches had not made great progress, for besides the scarcity of the feathered tribe, it was their moulting time, and most of those we shot were unfit for preserving. With the insects, however, we were more fortunate, and still more so with the plants, many herbaceous varieties being in flower. The rains, usually accompanied by thunder, were incessant during the month of June, and the dryness of the previous month was succeeded by great moisture. But the violent storms which prevailed in May were now replaced by calm, sultry weather. Under such favourable conditions as these vegetation rapidly developed; early in June the plains and mountain sides were becoming green, and flowers appeared in great profusion and variety, although the steppes of South-east Mongolia[1] bear no comparison with our meadow-land in Europe. Here you never see that uninterrupted carpet of flowers, or that delicate green turf; these plains under the most favourable conditions have a melancholy aspect, and everything is as monotonous as though made to measure. The grass grows in clumps of even height, and not of a bright green, the flowers lack
- ↑ I refer to those plains due west of the Suma-hada, where we passed the summer: in the Chakhar country the meadow-land probably presents a more cheerful aspect at this season.
