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42 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
then it has before that lost the greater part of its water,
it having been drawn off north to irrigate the cultivated
lands of Maral-bashi. Here the men with the punting-
poles had to keep a very sharp look-out, for the current
was swift and our vessel was constantly threatening to
come into collision with the bank. One day she did drive
so swiftly upon the low bank that, upon being struck by
the full force of the current, she came within an ace of
capsizing,
But the river soon widened out again. In rounding a
curve, where the current is always most powerful, our
ferry-boat was drawn close in to the right-bank, at a
spot where a decaying poplar, rooted in the very bed of
the river, was leaning a long way across the water. The
men did not perceive the obstacle in time to avoid it. Its
strong branches brushed along the side of our craft, and
did their best to sweep my tent from the deck. I succeeded
just in the nick of time in saving my precious instruments
by flinging them on the cabin-roof, so that after all we lost
nothing more than a very small piece of the tent-canvas.
Towards the end of September we reached a region in
which the river, after picking up some tributaries from the
north, again assumed noble proportions. But the current
was slow, its surface being ruffled by nothing more than
gently circling eddies. In the otherwise smooth surface
the veterans of the forest were mirroring their russet crowns.
It was a beautiful, a magnificent scene ! Not a breath
moved. Nature was in a Sabbath mood, an invisible
organ that could not be heard, only felt, was pouring a
solemn flood of music through the woods in praise of the
Eternal. There was no trace of human beings, no sign of
human dwellings. Not a dry stick crackled under the
foot of the solitary wanderer. At intervals in the dense
thickets, which form the forest undergrowth, appeared
the dark mouth of a tunnel, marking the tracks by which
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