“Look at these tombs!” said the Hutuktu to me.  “Here the son of Khan Uyuk was buried.  This young prince was bribed by the Chinese to kill his father but was frustrated in his attempt by his own sister, who killed him in her watchful care of her old father, the Emperor and Khan.  There is the tomb of Tsinilla, the beloved spouse of Khan Mangu.  She left the capital of China to go to Khara Bolgasun, where she fell in love with the brave shepherd Damcharen, who overtook the wind on his steed and who captured wild yaks and horses with his bare hands.  The enraged Khan ordered his unfaithful wife strangled but afterwards buried her with imperial honors and frequently came to her tomb to weep for his lost love.”

“And what happened to Damcharen?” I inquired.

The Hutuktu himself did not know; but his old servant, the real archive of legends, answered: 

“With the aid of ferocious Chahar brigands he fought with China for a long time.  It is, however, unknown how he died.”

Among the ruins the monks pray at certain fixed times and they also search for sacred books and objects concealed or buried in the debris.  Recently they found here two Chinese rifles and two gold rings and big bundles of old manuscripts tied with leather thongs.

“Why did this region attract the powerful emperors and Khans who ruled from the Pacific to the Adriatic?” I asked myself.  Certainly not these mountains and valleys covered with larch and birch, not these vast sands, receding lakes and barren rocks.  It seems that I found the answer.

The great emperors, remembering the vision of Jenghiz Khan, sought here new revelations and predictions of his miraculous, majestic destiny, surrounded by the divine honors, obeisance and hate.  Where could they come into touch with the gods, the good and bad spirits?  Only there where they abode.  All the district of Zain with these ancient ruins is just such a place.

“On this mountain only such men can ascend as are born of the direct line of Jenghiz Khan,” the Pandita explained to me.  “Half way up the ordinary man suffocates and dies, if he ventures to go further.  Recently Mongolian hunters chased a pack of wolves up this mountain and, when they came to this part of the mountainside, they all perished.  There on the slopes of the mountain lie the bones of eagles, big horned sheep and the kabarga antelope, light and swift as the wind.  There dwells the bad demon who possesses the book of human destinies.”

“This is the answer,” I thought.

In the Western Caucasus I once saw a mountain between Soukhoum Kale and Tuopsei where wolves, eagles and wild goats also perish, and where men would likewise perish if they did not go on horseback through this zone.  There the earth breathes out carbonic acid gas through holes in the mountainside, killing all animal life.  The gas clings to the earth in a layer about half a metre thick.  Men on horseback