The land whose disappearing primitive people gaze upon the bones of
their forefathers whitening in the sands and dust of their plains; where
are dying out the people who formerly conquered China, Siam, Northern
India and Russia and broke their chests against the iron lances of
the Polish knights, defending then all the Christian world against the
invasion of wild and wandering Asia: that is Mongolia.

The land swelling with natural riches, producing nothing, in need of
everything, destitute and suffering from the world's cataclysm: that is
Mongolia.

In this land, by order of Fate, after my unsuccessful attempt to reach
the Indian Ocean through Tibet, I spent half a year in the struggle to
live and to escape. My old and faithful friend and I were compelled,
willy-nilly, to participate in the exceedingly important and dangerous
events transpiring in Mongolia in the year of grace 1921. Thanks to
this, I came to know the calm, good and honest Mongolian people; I
read their souls, saw their sufferings and hopes; I witnessed the whole
horror of their oppression and fear before the face of Mystery, there
where Mystery pervades all life. I watched the rivers during the severe
cold break with a rumbling roar their chains of ice; saw lakes cast up
on their shores the bones of human beings; heard unknown wild voices
in the mountain ravines; made out the fires over miry swamps of the
will-o'-the-wisps; witnessed burning lakes; gazed upward to mountains
whose peaks could not be scaled; came across great balls of writhing
snakes in the ditches in winter; met with streams which are eternally
frozen, rocks like petrified caravans of camels, horsemen and carts; and
over all saw the barren mountains whose folds looked like the mantle of
Satan, which the glow of the evening sun drenched with blood.