After leaving the stream, we came to the entrance of a narrow gorge, where Lobsan said we must keep our guns ready, for the Bana men hid behind rocks and appeared unexpectedly. His fears were increased by the sight of some croaking ravens. He maintained that the noise they were making was a bad omen, and to counteract the effect one of the old muzzle-loaders was placed on its stand and fired at the birds, but of course with no fatal results, for the croaking was redoubled, and we continued our ascent of the gorge. We then crossed a small plateau, and before entering another gorge we came to a stream, whose water they never drink, for it is considered a deadly poison to both man and beast. Although the water was quite clear, it tasted as though there was soda in it. On account of this poisonous stream, we had to make a ten hours' march before reaching any other water. Towards sunset we emerged into an open plain, and riding on a few miles we came to a spring and fruit bushes, evidently a haunt of bears, for one fine black fellow quickly made away towards the hills on our approach.
Some distance off in this plain of Noring Hol lay a salt lake, on whose further banks were the remains of two villages. These had been till lately Mongol homes, but the owners had fled in fear and deserted them on the approach of the Mohammedan rebels of Kansu, some of whom fled this way into Turkistan, after they had been defeated by the Chinese.
In this neighbourhood we saw for the first time the crests of hills covered with pine trees. Sometimes encampments are made in the valleys, and articles are made from the wood.
On the seventh day of our march we came to the spot, on the banks of the Tuling Gol, where lately there must have been a very considerable encampment. The posts to which the owners had tethered their animals still remained. Various articles lay scattered about, and the number of large fireplaces that had been built, testified to the numbers of the encampers. Here we learnt a small Chinese army had halted, in their pursuit of the Mohammedans fleeing into Turkistan.
Two more miles beyond this we came to a miserable village, Tuling, or Selling Gompa. This was quite the dirtiest and most dilapidated collection of houses that either of us had ever seen, or want to see again. All the inhabitants were either blind or lame or diseased in some shape or form, and, clad in filthy rags, they lay about basking in the sun and dirt. The big black dogs, blear-eyed and mangy, that crawled about, were well suited to the place. It was an asylum for all lepers, cripples, and other sufferers of these districts. It was close to this village that the French traveller, De Trouille de Rhins, had met an untimely end.
MONGOL CAMP: ONE OF OUR HALTS.
At this point there are two roads to China, one branching off half right, and the other half left. The former passes through a district from which much salt is obtained; it is a shorter but rougher road, and according to our Mongols a more dangerous one. They therefore elected to travel by the other. There was a green valley up which the shorter road led, where we could see numbers of black tents of the Bana tribes, and their immense flocks of sheep, their cattle, tame yak, and ponies.
With the exception of one white tent, all these Bana tents were as black as could be. The roofs of them were for the most part octagonal, with a hole in the middle to release the smoke. To each corner a rope is attached, which is fastened to a stick driven into the ground, and this again is kept secure by another rope attached to a peg.