Is only asked for spirits masked
To leap from trees and flowers.
The servants and horses had disappeared round the ruined rest-house, and I had a queer sense that things seldom seen by mortal eyes would have revealed themselves had I been quite alone. I remember strolling up to a largish toghrak tree, under which a little tent was to be pitched for me, and what was perhaps a big rat ran down the bark with incredible speed and seemed to vanish, and later on, as my brother and I walked back along the road to listen for the mapa which was to bring Sattur and our evening meal, some creature, probably a fox, noiselessly rushed past us like a flash, giving the impression of being a shadow rather than anything material.
A DULANI WOMAN AND HER SON.
Page 226.
The water here was brown and bitter and smelt so disagreeably that neither we nor our animals could quench our thirst. When the waggons came up they made only a short halt and went on at 2 A.M., and we ourselves followed soon after, as we were anxious to water our horses, not to mention our own thirst.
The usual early morning breeze changed to a wind that blew up clouds of sand; therefore we pushed forward as fast as we could, in case a real sandstorm should overtake us. This particular tract of desert is called Karakum or Black Sand, and I imagined that the name must be some kind of native joke, as the sand was particularly white. We rode on hour after hour and were thankful finally to reach a serai, before which stood a trough full of water. My chestnut was so impatient to quench his thirst that he kicked my ankle as I dismounted, presumably to hasten my movements. He was always a bad-tempered animal—Shaitan (Satan) the grooms called him—snapping with his ears laid back at any human being or animal within reach; but in spite of this he was my favourite on the march, as none of our other horses could rival his elastic walk and easy canter. I was thankful that he had not started kicking earlier in our acquaintance; for on every subsequent occasion that I rode him he lashed out at me as I slipped from the saddle, and in order to save me from a broken ankle my brother was obliged to hold up his fore-leg; so perforce I changed to another mount.
There are many advantages in travelling officially, transport and supply being thus made easy, but never before had roads and bridges been mended in honour of our arrival, as was the case in the Merket district. The highway was dotted at intervals with parties of peasants who were piling earth over the many holes in the bridges, and driving rows of stakes into the ground along the irrigation channels where the road had broken away. These stakes would then be padded with maize-bents, reeds or tamarisk scrub, and plastered over with thick lumps of wet mud. This method of road-making, which prevails throughout Chinese Turkestan, is by no means an ideal one, for when the earth and padding fall away the points of the props stick out in a manner most dangerous to horses if going at any pace.
The glorious weather we had had on the whole was now changing, and, after a gale so violent that our tents that night seemed to be in danger every moment, we became aware of the approach of winter. The sun had vanished, a grey veil lay over the landscape, and there was black frost in the air. The villagers had donned their padded red, black or blue long winter coats, those of the women being often striped in many colours, and all wore their pork-pie hats of velvet or cloth edged with fur or sheepskin and looked cold and miserable. Jafar Bai amused us by pointing out a shady spot where we could eat our mid-day lunch, with his usual formula, “Here you will find shelter from the sun,” although he himself had told us that it was now the season of the storms that herald in the winter.