Untitled

TOPOGRAPHY. 118
has acquired the right to maintain at its own expense a postal service between
Kiakhta and Tientsin, rid Urga. In all the towns of Urga, Kalgan, Peking, and
Tientsin, Russian agents look after the transit of goods, which are forwarded once
a month, and the comfort of travellers, who start every ten days. The journey
occupies on an average about two weeks.
Kamkorum, the old capital of the vast Mongolian Empire, lies in the same river
basin as Kiakhta. It might seem surprising that the imperial residence should
have remained for nearly seventy years in the midst of the dreary plains of the
Upper Selenga. But what the nomad conquerors most needed was a position on
the open steppe, whence sudden expeditions could be directed either against China
Fig.
47. MONGOLIAN HIGHWAYS.
Scale 1 : 80,000,000.
600 Miles.
or Western Asia. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the work of
conquest was completed, and the empire divided into eastern and western sections,
such a capital as Karakorum could serve no further purpose ; hence it was soon
succeeded by Peking and Samarkand. Holin, or Khorin (Kara-kuren, or " Black
Camp"), is already mentioned by the Chinese chroniclers of the eighth century ;
but although Jenghiz Khan may have here established one of his chief encampments,
it did not become the imperial capital till 1234, when Oktai Khan caused it to be
enclosed. Here Longjumcl and Rubruk beheld the Mongol Khan in all his glory,
courted by tin- mighty of the earth, and surrounded by adventurers from all the
Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian states in the Old World. Guillaume of
Paris laid out his pleasure grounds, planning elegant fountains with their jets of