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82 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
other. They struck against our ferry-boat, and were
broken to pieces ; became consolidated again and cohided
with the frozen banks, which set them spinning hke tops.
The next day the drift-ice was even denser. The river
wore a very strange appearance, just as though it had
frozen and a shower of snow had fallen upon it, only the
white mass was in unceasing movement. When we watched
it steadily for some time, we began to fancy it was the ice
that was motionless, and it was we who were floating
up-stream.
That evening we chose an unfortunate camping-ground,
a quiet, sheltered creek, which in the morning was frozen
so hard that the men were easily able to walk all round
every vessel of our flotilla. It was as though these were
embedded in lava, and it took a long time to hew out a
canal by which to get them back to the river. Meanwhile
the ice-disks were clattering together like the breaking of
pottery. All day long we had, as it were, this fluvial
carillon playing round about us, and the mihions of ice-
crystals glittered and sparkled in the sunshine. The
unceasing noise, coupled with the blending of the lights,
produced a deafening and somnolent effect upon the senses.
These endless snow-white rings were wreaths of immortelles
that the Tarim was putting on in token of the cold shroud
under which it was about to be buried.
After that we took care to avoid the quiet creeks,
but halted in the very middle of the stream. In the
evening, when I sat writing up my diaries, every disk of ice
that went past bumped, bumped against the ferry-boat,
making her groan and shiver from end to end. I worked
14 hours a day. No sooner did we get our clothes on
than off we went. I had a brazier standing beside my
WTiting-table, over which I occasionally warmed my hands.
I ate my breakfast, generally of boiled fish, whilst under
way, and now had my dinner as well on board.
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