Here they supplied him with goat's milk, a kind of cheese made from curdled mare's milk and some dried meat which was palatable. Gray fell asleep quickly on a pile of camel skins, while the men—Bassalor Danek had referred to them as tumani[[1]]—watched curiously.
[[1]] Possibly derived from the Tatar word tuman, a squadron of warriors, hunters.
Gray awakened with the first light that came into the embrasures. He found that he was very stiff, and somewhat chilled. At his first movement the tumani were up. One of them, a broad-shouldered youth who said his name was Garluk, spoke broken Chinese, of a dialect almost unknown to Gray.
He explained that they were in one of the towers of the temple which projected well above the sand. Gray, for the first time, had a fair view of Sungan from the embrasures.
It was a clear day. The sky to the east was crimson over the brown plain of the Gobi. The sun shot level shafts of light against the ruins. Gray saw the wall of the old city—the abode of the Wusun. Later in the day he wrote down some notes of what he observed on the reverse side of the maps he carried. They were roughly as follows:
The old city had been built in an oasis, apparently four or five centuries ago. Willows, poplars and tamarisks lined narrow canals which had been constructed through the ruins from the wells. By walling these canals with stone, the Wusun had kept them intact from the encroaching sand. There was even grass near the canals, and several flocks of sheep. The trees afforded shade—although the sun is never unendurable in the Gobi, owing to the altitude.
The buildings of the city had been more than half enveloped by the moving sand which was swept into the walled area—so Garluk said—with each kara buran. Owing perhaps to the protection of the wall, the sand ridges around the inner city were higher than the ground within. So it was difficult to obtain a good view of the city from the surrounding country.
Gray reflected that this must be why the Kirghiz had reported seeing only the summits of some towers; also, why he himself had taken the foliage that he made out through his glasses for bushes.
The buildings of Sungan were ancient, and fashioned of solid sandstone so that although partially covered with sand, their interiors—after the embrasures had been sealed—were reasonably comfortable and warm dwellings. Delabar had been correct in quoting the legend that there were extensive vaults and cellars in Sungan. The underground passages communicated from vault to vault—a system that was most useful in this region where the black sand-storms occur every day in the spring, early summer and throughout the winter.
"Mighty good dugouts, these," thought Gray. "The Wusun have certainly dug themselves in on their ancestral hearths. Wonder how they manage for food?"