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WATER! WATER! 251
When I rose on the morning of the 19th February, it was
raw and chilly without my usual brazier. After a very
simple breakfast I hurried on ahead on foot. Water !
water I was the sole dominating thought, or, rather,
desire, uppermost in the mind of every one of us. We
must at all costs find a spring somewhere, for this was the
twelfth day since we left the last well, and as its water was
saltish the camels had drunk but little of it. If we did not
find water within the next day or two the camels would
assuredly perish, and what would then become of us ? I
estimated that we had still four or five days to go to reach
Altimish-bulak. The question was, could we hold out
until we got there ?
Abdu Rehim, the camel-hunter of Singher, who had so
cleverly led us to Altimish-bulak the year before, had told
me that there were three other salt springs to the east of
Altimish-bulak ; it was upon them I largely built my
hopes. Yet how easily we might pass them without seeing
them, hidden as they no doubt were in some gully or hollow
of the ground. Once before I had walked, or rather
crawled, for my life —namely, in the Takla-makan. But on
that occasion I knew for certain that if I could only con-
tinue far enough to the east, I was bound to come to the
Khotan-daria ; that is to say, it was a line I was making for.
On the present occasion, however, the objective was a
single small point, Altimish-bulak, unless fortune so far
favoured us as to guide us to one of Abdu Rehim’s more
easterly springs. Perhaps you will think it was a stupid and
senseless thing to risk my valuable caravan, and the results
I had already obtained, in this way. Yes, that was pre-
cisely the thought of every traveller who had explored this
part of Asia before me, for each had carefully avoided
crossing this particular belt of country. Both east and
west of my present route the desert had been traversed by
a few explorers ; but just here, in the very centre of the
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