This man was the Hutuktu Jahantsi, Chairman of the Mongolian Council of Ministers, and honored and revered far beyond the bournes of Mongolia.  The others were the Ministers—­Khans and the Highest Princes of Khalkha.  Jahantsi Hutuktu invited Baron Ungern to the place at his side, while they brought in a European chair for me.  Baron Ungern announced to the Council of Ministers through an interpreter that he would leave Mongolia in a few days and urged them to protect the freedom won for the lands inhabited by the successors of Jenghiz Khan, whose soul still lives and calls upon the Mongols to become anew a powerful people and reunite again into one great Mid-Asiatic State all the Asian kingdoms he had ruled.

The General rose and all the others followed him.  He took leave of each one separately and sternly.  Only before Jahantsi Lama he bent low while the Hutuktu placed his hands on the Baron’s head and blessed him.  From the Council Chamber we passed at once to the Russian style house which is the personal dwelling of the Living Buddha.  The house was wholly surrounded by a crowd of red and yellow Lamas; servants, councilors of Bogdo, officials, fortune tellers, doctors and favorites.  From the front entrance stretched a long red rope whose outer end was thrown over the wall beside the gate.  Crowds of pilgrims crawling up on their knees touch this end of the rope outside the gate and hand the monk a silken hatyk or a bit of silver.  This touching of the rope whose inner end is in the hand of the Bogdo establishes direct communication with the holy, incarnated Living God.  A current of blessing is supposed to flow through this cable of camel’s wool and horse hair.  Any Mongol who has touched the mystic rope receives and wears about his neck a red band as the sign of his accomplished pilgrimage.

I had heard very much about the Bogdo Khan before this opportunity to see him.  I had heard of his love of alcohol, which had brought on blindness, about his leaning toward exterior western culture and about his wife drinking deep with him and receiving in his name numerous delegations and envoys.

In the room which the Bogdo used as his private study, where two Lama secretaries watched day and night over the chest that contained his great seals, there was the severest simplicity.  On a low, plain, Chinese lacquered table lay his writing implements, a case of seals given by the Chinese Government and by the Dalai Lama and wrapped in a cloth of yellow silk.  Nearby was a low easy chair, a bronze brazier with an iron stovepipe leading up from it; on the walls were the signs of the swastika, Tibetan and Mongolian inscriptions; behind the easy chair a small altar with a golden statue of Buddha before which two tallow lamps were burning; the floor was covered with a thick yellow carpet.