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loo ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
were of no avail ; our supply of ice was limited. Very soon
they disappeared like black dots on the expanse of yellow
sand, and thus the last tie which linked us to civilization
was severed, and we had but the silence and mystery of the
desert to lean upon.
Christmas Day was a hard day for us. The level depres-
sions seemed all at once to have come to an end, and we lost
our wa}^ amongst the sand, which continued to grow higher
and higher. The caravan advanced with painful slowness,
step by step, with frequent and exasperating stops. Now
a camel would fall, and then we had to unload him, get him
on his feet, and load him up again. Another time it would
be a steep and awkward crest which had to be levelled
down with spades. Then, to make matters still worse, the
wind from the north got up again, and enveloped the country
in the hateful dust-haze, filling our minds with a sense of
helplessness and strange disquietude. It was as if we were
making desperate efforts ’to get ourselves entangled in a
maze from which we should be unable to extricate our-
selves.
I dismounted and led the way on foot. And when I at
length reached the summit of a dune 200 feet high, the pros-
pect which met my gaze was anything but reassuring. The
leeward side of the dune was almost perpendicular, and
the sixteenth hayir gaped like a coal-black pit at my feet,
its surface wet in the middle, with a girdle of salt all round
it, shut in everywhere by lofty dunes. It made me think
of the entrance to the infernal regions. When the caravan
overtook me we once more did a glissade to the bottom, and
then encamped on the edge of the foreboding pit.
Never have I spent the evening of Christmas Day amid
more gloomy or more depressing surroundings ! The only
thing common to the happy memories of that festive season
was the cold. After sitting shivering and shaking, with
chattering teeth, and clustering like bats round our niggardly
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