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120 ADVENTURES IN TIBET.
returning from their warmer winter quarters in immense
flocks, following the tracks which they had followed for
generations past. Their cries, their noisy chatterings, were
to be heard at all times of the day and night, and in all
weathers. We saw them by day, whether calm or stormy,
whether the sun was hidden or peeped out through the
ragged clouds. We heard them on the pitch-dark nights,
when the sky was black with clouds and the earth shrouded
in mist. It was amazing to me how they were able to
find their way along their aerial pathways. On, on they
flew in never-ending columns, without rest, without pause,
always in a breathless hurry. The natives said that the
same flock always returns year after year to the same
breeding-places, and that they have the same laws as
to the rights of possession as the Lop-men themselves have.
Every day the Cossacks used to go out hunting, and they
always returned with their hands full of pheasants, wild-
duck, wild-geese, or deer. The country swarmed with
game, so that they were able to keep our larder well
supplied.
Our camp was gradually converted into a market-place,
and became an important and well-known centre for the
whole of the Lop country. Thither the peasantry brought
in their products, and at intervals merchants from Kutchar
and Korla came bringing sugar, cube tea, Chinese porcelain,
Russian tea-cups, cloth, cottons, etc. One merchant
settled on the spot and built a " house," and opened a shop
as good as any to be found in the bazaars of Central Asia.
It became a very popular resort, where the Mussulmans
and Cossacks used to sit and drink tea, and smoke, and
bargain. Ali Akhun, a tailor from Kutchar, also set up an
establishment, and I can assure you he found plenty to do
from morning till night.
Thus, after the profound stillness of the desert I now
found myself the centre of extraordinary activity and
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