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74 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
far and wide through the interior of Asia ; but the natives
never knew where we came from or what was the object
of our journey. All they knew was that I was a strange
and most remarkable person. More than two years after-
wards I was asked by some Indian merchants in Ladak,
whether I had heard of a white man who for several months
had sailed down a big river a long way to the north ; they
assured me that a similar journey down the Indus would
be impossible. The 21st November was our fir-st day on
the new river. This was extremely irregular, in that the
current was repeatedly divided by small islands, upon
which we should unfailingly have run aground had not
an entire fleet of native canoemen gone on in advance,
sounding and testing the depth with their paddles.
Every now and again we came to a dead poplar sticking
up in the middle of the channel, its branches extended
menacingly over the water. For safety’s sake we had
to take down the tent and carry our instruments inside
the black cabin. On both sides the stream was shut in
by high sand-dunes, and the belts of vegetation grew
narrower and narrower.
We shot down the cataracts at a dizzy pace, nearly
four miles an hour. As it was just turning dark when
we entered the sandy desert proper, we thought it better
to halt for the night. But as soon as day broke we were
off again, yellow sand-dunes on both sides of us fully
150 feet high. A dreary, dreary region, dead cold, not
a human being, not an animal, not even a crow or a
vulture, the usual denizens of the wilderness. It was
everywhere as silent as a churchyard, no sound reached
us from the desert, all we could hear was the rippling
song of the river, and that would now soon be silenced.
It was a totally unknown country through which the
river had here carved its path. Even our canoemen had
never been there before ; but they did royal service with
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