Down below the monastery is the foreign settlement where the Russian, foreign and richest Chinese merchants live and where the multi-colored and crowded oriental bazaar carries forward its bustling life.  A kilometre away the greyish enclosure of Maimachen surrounds the remaining Chinese trading establishments, while farther on one sees a long row of Russian private houses, a hospital, church, prison and, last of all, the awkward four-storied red brick building that was formerly the Russian Consulate.

We were already within a short distance of the monastery, when I noticed several Mongol soldiers in the mouth of a ravine nearby, dragging back and concealing in the ravine three dead bodies.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

The Cossacks only smiled without answering.  Suddenly they straightened up with a sharp salute.  Out of the ravine came a small, stocky Mongolian pony with a short man in the saddle.  As he passed us, I noticed the epaulets of a colonel and the green cap with a visor.  He examined me with cold, colorless eyes from under dense brows.  As he went on ahead, he took off his cap and wiped the perspiration from his bald head.  My eyes were struck by the strange undulating line of his skull.  It was the man “with the head like a saddle,” against whom I had been warned by the old fortune teller at the last ourton outside Van Kure!

“Who is this officer?” I inquired.

Although he was already quite a distance in front of us, the Cossacks whispered:  “Colonel Sepailoff, Commandant of Urga City.”

Colonel Sepailoff, the darkest person on the canvas of Mongolian events!  Formerly a mechanician, afterwards a gendarme, he had gained quick promotion under the Czar’s regime.  He was always nervously jerking and wriggling his body and talking ceaselessly, making most unattractive sounds in his throat and sputtering with saliva all over his lips, his whole face often contracted with spasms.  He was mad and Baron Ungern twice appointed a commission of surgeons to examine him and ordered him to rest in the hope he could rid the man of his evil genius.  Undoubtedly Sepailoff was a sadist.  I heard afterwards that he himself executed the condemned people, joking and singing as he did his work.  Dark, terrifying tales were current about him in Urga.  He was a bloodhound, fastening his victims with the jaws of death.  All the glory of the cruelty of Baron Ungern belonged to Sepailoff.  Afterwards Baron Ungern once told me in Urga that this Sepailoff annoyed him and that Sepailoff could kill him just as well as others.  Baron Ungern feared Sepailoff, not as a man, but dominated by his own superstition, because Sepailoff had found in Transbaikalia a witch doctor who predicted the death of the Baron if he dismissed Sepailoff.  Sepailoff knew no pardon for Bolshevik nor for any one connected with the Bolsheviki in any way.  The reason for his vengeful spirit was that the Bolsheviki had tortured him in prison and, after his escape, had killed all his family.  He was now taking his revenge.