A MOVIE IN MONGOLIA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3141, 30 October 1922, Page 8

A MOVIE IN MONGOLIA.

(By Batisett Digby.) Artei* several days' tramp through Trane-Baikalia I came to the border ul' .Mongolia. Hero life was extraordinarily interesting. Siberia came to an end at last in. the trough of a final wave of hills, where lay the twin frontier settlements of Kiakhta-Troitskosavsk. Beyond lay the blank specs on the map. mysterious Central Asia. To Troitskosavsk came the Khalka; Mongols—big bronzed men in robes of burnt red homespun, wearing quaint peaked fur hats with red and yellow ribbons fluttering from the back. They galloped up the hill on their tough', shaggy ponies, or lumbered up on camel-back, to take a glimpse of this new world of which they heard such strange rumors in the distant core of Asia. Threading my way through the tethered camels. I entered a, log barn cinema, and took a seat among their riders, in the cheap benches up in the front. Seven a I of then* men. the Russians told me, had never seen : , settlement of white men until that da v. I had watched them wandering around all afternoon, hand-in-hand, wide-eved. open-mouthed, like little children i'n a fairy country.

Not'only had these nomad herdsmen and camel caravan convovmen hardlv the vaguest idea of what they had paid to see but the scenes of civilised 1 life wore quite new to them. When there Hashed on the screen, a picture of a drawing-room, what could thev have made of the fair lady playing the grand piano, of the scenes shown in the pictures on the wails, of the seltzer svphon a butler brought in, of that salamander lady who stood with her hand over the bulb of an electric lamp They sat gaping with puzzled foreheadand raised brows. Hut at the next episode, set in the lobby of an exhibition of pictures, Iho lady cashier kept .smiling on us from the screen, and the Mongols—doubtless gay "lads" back at home —nudged each 'other and beamed back at her. Mcvv we were getting down to cosmopolitan comprcheusihjlities. They chuckled outright, too. when a glass of beer was upset in a studio rag- things being upnet are a joke from Eskimo Greenland' to the Congo, lint a chorus of startled "Hu Hu!'s" broke out when a young painter was seized by his waggish' playmates and tossed in a blanket, nearly up to the ceiling. The Mongol- thought a murder was coining or that the victim of tins informal treatment must surely be going to be put to torture. Presently a motor car came down the street toward us—on the lilm. It came pretty fast, and something approaching a panic broke dut on the .Mongol benches around me. There wrn' alarmed', instinctive "Mu Mill's" and "A-ooh!\s and one apprehensive old fellow arose to flee. Hut his comrades realised that il was all right and pulled him down and comforted him. Another studio scene. Suddenly the Mongols began lo clutch each oilier by i lie sleeve and heads were put together. There were pointings and excited whisperings. They had spotted. on the studio wall a large picture of a horse being groomed. Ah! here was something intelligible ;i t hist ! These bronzed men of the upland desert and tin- rolling plateau, spending their lives on horobaek, almost born in (he saddle. could understand this. . . . A day or two biter I was pacing when a familiar phrase on the emoma.'s door-board caught my eye. A film of "Diimii art .Maxeema" was to he given. "Dam.-i art Maxeema':''' "Duma " Oh. that was it. Why our old friend •'The Girl From Maxim's." Lucky Mongols, their education was progressing apace !.