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A PERILOUS DESERT JOURNEY. 91
months that followed he had various adventures. Once
his flank was literally ripped open by a wild-boar, so that his
intestines hung out of the wound ; nevertheless, after the
place was sewn up, he recovered again. On another occa-
sion he ran off into the burning desert, and we thought he
was lost, but he turned up again at the end of six months.
His memory is especially dear to me, because he accom-
panied me on my forced and perilous ride towards Lassa,
and protected us at night.
Around the " market-place " in our village, where the
men had their open-air kitchen and their " club " beside
the fire—which I may add was never allowed to go out until
May of the following year—our huts, stables, and tents
were built and piles of provisions were stacked. The natives
came from far and near, partly out of curiosity, partly to
sell us goods, so that there was a perpetual coming and
going, and an incessant murmur of voices as from an actual
crowded market-place.
Here at our head-quarters at Yanghi-kol I allowed myself
a few days’ rest. These I partly employed in making a
reconnaissance into the sandy desert to the south, with the
idea of learning something of its characteristics, for I had
made up my mind to travel right across the desert to the
village of Tatran on the Cherchen-daria, a distance of 170
miles. The natives did all they could to dissuade me from
my purpose ; for they regarded the enterprise as sheer
madness, and me as one going to deliberate suicide. No-
body had ever been into that terrible desert, and anybody
who did venture in need never hope to come out again.
All they knew about it was that, several hundred years ago,
there lived far away in the south-west a heathen people,
under the rule of one Atti Kush Padishah. Holy Imams
had gone there to spread the faith of Islam, and when the
people refused to accept the new teaching, the Imams called
down upon them the wrath and vengeance of Heaven, and
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