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io6 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
an excellent day’s work, and covered 13 miles. In the
evening when we encamped, the wind had dropped, and
the smoke and flames of our camp-fires curled straight up
towards the brightly sparkling stars.
The ist January, 1900, rose gloomily, without giving us
a single glimpse of the morning sun. The day’s march
was very heavy, for there was no longer any level ground
to march on. As far as we could see to the south, there was
nothing but a chaos of more or less connected sand-dunes.
Up to that point we had been like a vessel navigating the
calms ; now we found ourselves all at once flung into the
middle of the storm-tossed ocean. The waves were as high
as houses, and we made desperately slow advance, tramping
up and down the heavy dunes, first one camel stumbling
and falling, and then another. The vegetation once more
came almost entirely to an end. A long way to the east
there still appeared to be bayir depressions, but they lay
too far out of our line of march. The southern horizon
presented a serrated outline, like a saw-blade, the points
being lofty, dominating pyramidal dunes. That day we
did not cover more than 8^ miles.
Next morning an unexpected scene met our eyes. It
had snowed during the night, and the dunes were clothed
with a sheet of dazzling white, the effect of which was to
make them appear even more desolate and naked than
usual. There were no longer any friendly bayirs to help
us, nothing but sand !
During the afternoon a strong gale sprang up in the
south-south-west, and the snow whirled about the caravan
in clouds. Twilight settled down upon the inextricable
chaos of snow and sand, and for a long time we searched in
vain for a suitable place to encamp in ; at length, when it
was as dark as pitch, we stopped beside a dead tamarisk,
and it afforded us a little fuel. The small oases of kamish
which we had found in the middle of the desert had now
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