Across Mongolian Plains Quotes

“In February the equipment for our summer's work in Mongolia was on its way across the desert by caravan. We had sent flour, bacon, coffee, tea, sugar, butter and dried fruit, for these could be purchased in Urga only at prohibitive prices. Even then, with camel charges at fourteen cents a cattie (1 1/3 lbs.), a fifty-pound sack of flour cost us more than six dollars by the time it reached Urga.”
― Roy Chapman Andrews, Across Mongolian Plains A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest'

“But that night when I strolled about the mission courtyard, under the spell of the starry, desert sky, I drifted back again in thought to the glorious days of Kublai Khan. My heart was hot with resentment that this thing had come. I realized then that, for better or for worse, the sanctity of the desert was gone forever. Camels will still plod their silent way across the age-old plains, but the mystery is lost. The secrets which were yielded up to but a chosen few are open now to all, and the world and his wife will speed their noisy course across the miles of rolling prairie, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, knowing nothing of that resistless desert charm which led men out into the Great Unknown.”
― Roy Chapman Andrews, Across Mongolian Plains A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest'

“I wish I could make those who spend their lives within a city know how strange and out of place that motor seemed, alone there upon the open plain on the borders of Mongolia. Imagine a camel or an elephant with all its Oriental trappings suddenly appearing on Fifth Avenue! You would think at once that it had escaped from a circus or a zoo and would be mainly curious as to what the traffic policeman would do when it did not obey his signals.”
― Roy Chapman Andrews, Across Mongolian Plains A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest'