He never ceases to ponder upon the cause of the church and of Mongolia and at the same time likes to indulge himself with useless trifles.  He amuses himself with artillery.  A retired Russian officer presented him with two old guns, for which the donor received the title of Tumbaiir Hun, that is, “Prince Dear-to-my-Heart.”  On holidays these cannon were fired to the great amusement of the blind man.  Motorcars, gramophones, telephones, crystals, porcelains, pictures, perfumes, musical instruments, rare animals and birds; elephants, Himalayan bears, monkeys, Indian snakes and parrots—­all these were in the palace of “the god” but all were soon cast aside and forgotten.

To Urga come pilgrims and presents from all the Lamaite and Buddhist world.  Once the treasurer of the palace, the Honorable Balma Dorji, took me into the great hall where the presents were kept.  It was a most unique museum of precious articles.  Here were gathered together rare objects unknown to the museums of Europe.  The treasurer, as he opened a case with a silver lock, said to me: 

“These are pure gold nuggets from Bei Kem; here are black sables from Kemchick; these the miraculous deer horns; this a box sent by the Orochons and filled with precious ginseng roots and fragrant musk; this a bit of amber from the coast of the ‘frozen sea’ and it weighs 124 lans (about ten pounds); these are precious stones from India, fragrant zebet and carved ivory from China.”

He showed the exhibits and talked of them for a long time and evidently enjoyed the telling.  And really it was wonderful!  Before my eyes lay the bundles of rare furs; white beaver, black sables, white, blue and black fox and black panthers; small beautifully carved tortoise shell boxes containing hatyks ten or fifteen yards long, woven from Indian silk as fine as the webs of the spider; small bags made of golden thread filled with pearls, the presents of Indian Rajahs; precious rings with sapphires and rubies from China and India; big pieces of jade, rough diamonds; ivory tusks ornamented with gold, pearls and precious stones; bright clothes sewn with gold and silver thread; walrus tusks carved in bas-relief by the primitive artists on the shores of the Behring Sea; and much more that one cannot recall or recount.  In a separate room stood the cases with the statues of Buddha, made of gold, silver, bronze, ivory, coral, mother of pearl and from a rare colored and fragrant species of wood.

“You know when conquerors come into a country where the gods are honored, they break the images and throw them down.  So it was more than three hundred years ago when the Kalmucks went into Tibet and the same was repeated in Peking when the European troops looted the place in 1900.  But do you know why this is done?  Take one of the statues and examine it.”

I picked up one nearest the edge, a wooden Buddha, and began examining it.  Inside something was loose and rattled.