Now we tried to cross the broad swampy bed of the stream. Muhamed Isa mounted his horse, but his steed sank in up to the belly; we had to give up the attempt and follow the bank instead. At times we had to cross side channels with the same treacherous ground. When the pilot had shown the way, some laden mules followed; then the other animals came all together. They sank up to the knee in the squelching ooze, and the ground behind them looked like an indiarubber sponge.
At ten o’clock the daily storm set in. In the north-west its outer margin was marked with great sharpness. It rolled, huge, black, and heavy, over the plateau. Now the storm is over our heads and its first black fringes swallow up the blue expanses of the sky. Two ravens, which have faithfully followed us for some days, croak hoarsely; a few small birds skim twittering over the ground. The hail lashes us with terrible violence; it comes from the side, and the animals turn their tails to the storm, and thus leave the trail, and have to be driven again into the right direction. We do not know where we are going. I halt with Muhamed Isa for a moment’s rest on a hill.
| 58 a, 58 b. Pantholops Antelope. 59, 60. Ovis Ammon. Sketches by the Author. |
“It would be better if we filled some goatskin sacks with water, in case we lose sight of the stream,” he suggests to me.
“No, let us go on; it will soon clear up, and then we can consider the matter.”
And the train moves on in spite of the drifting snow and the wintry darkness. It grows light, and the eyes survey unhindered the dreary, hilly, snow-covered land; westwards extend the plains of Ling-shi-tang; to the south-east stretches the immense Karakorum range with peaks covered with eternal snow, where thunder rolls among blue-black leaden clouds. Soon this storm also reaches us, and we are enveloped in dense, fine, dry snowflakes, while the darkness of night reigns around us. I am riding at the tail of the train. The caravan is divided into four columns. We travel in the wake of the last, which looks almost black through the mist; the one in front of it appears as a dirty grey patch; the next is hardly perceptible, and the foremost is almost quite invisible. Muhamed Isa has vanished. The snow now changes into large feathery flakes, which sweep almost horizontally over the ground. All is silent in our company; no one speaks: the men walk with their bodies bent forward and their fur caps drawn over their ears. The whole party looks now like snow men, and the snow makes the loads heavier for the animals than they need be.
At last our old friend, the brook, peeped out again from the duskiness, and we pitched our camp on the bank. Tsering discovered abundance of yapkak plants close at hand—some green, to which the animals were led, others dry, and very acceptable as fuel. In the evening there were 5½ degrees of frost. The moonlight fell in sheaves of rays through an atmosphere full of fine snow crystals. Absolute silence! One can hear the puppies’ hearts beat, the ticking of the chronometer, the cold of night descending and penetrating into the earth.
The country we marched through on September 5 was good and level, especially near a small lake, which now showed its blue surface in the south-east. Like all other salt lakes in Tibet it seems to be drying up, for we travelled for some distance over its dry muddy bed, and saw, higher up, plainly marked old terraced banks. Muhamed Isa reported that an exhausted mule would probably not be able to cross a pass in a small ridge which barred our way. It managed, however, to get over, and came into camp in the evening, but was thin and exhausted. Two Pantholops antelopes, easily distinguishable by their long, lyre-shaped horns, sped away southwards, and we came across a wolf’s spoor. In some spots the pasture was so good that we halted a few minutes to let the animals feed. We were sometimes tempted to pitch our camp, but yet we passed on. At last we bivouacked in an expansion of the valley with a stagnant creek, yapkak, and thin grass. We had scarcely hoped to find these three things so necessary to us—pasturage, fuel, and water, so soon and so close to the Karakorum. In this camp, No. 6, we decided to give the animals a day’s rest after all their exertions (Illustrations 58 a, 58 b).
On September 7, at daybreak, six miserable jades were picked out from the hired horses, and, as their loads were already consumed, were allowed to return home with their two guides. The sick mule lay dead. The sky was perfectly cloudless and the day became burning hot. In another respect we entered on new conditions, for, though we had covered 19 miles, we had not seen a drop of water before we reached the place where our camp was pitched. It seemed not unlikely that the monsoon clouds would come no more over the Karakorum, and then scarcity of water might render our situation very critical.