“Two o’clock; we shall soon have been lying six hours on the morass.”
| 78. A Dangerous Situation on the Yeshil-kul. In Moonshine. |
We nodded a little once more, but did not really sleep for a minute; from time to time Robert told me how badly his feet were frozen. At three o’clock he exclaimed, after a long silence: “Now I have no more feeling in any of my toes.”
“The sun will soon come.” At a quarter past four begins a faint glimmer of dawn. We are so chilled through that we can hardly stand up. But at length we pull ourselves up and stamp on the ground. Then we cower again over the cold ashes of our fire. We constantly look to the east and watch the new day, which slowly peeps over the mountains as though it would look about before it ventures out. At five o’clock the highest peaks receive a purple tinge, and we cast a faint shadow on the bottom of the boat, and then the sun rises, cold and bright-yellow, over the crest to the east. Now the springs of life revive. Rehim Ali has disappeared for an hour, and now we see him tramping through the swamp with a large bundle of wood, and soon we have kindled a sparkling, crackling fire. We undress to get rid of our wet and cold clothes, and warm our bodies at the flames, and soon our limbs are supple again.
Then Muhamed Isa’s tall figure appears on horseback in the distance. He ties a cord to the foreleg of his horse and leaves it at the edge of the swamp, while he proceeds on foot. When I was suffering most severely from cold I had composed a sharp curtain-lecture for him as soon as we met. But now when I caught sight of my excellent caravan leader I forgot it all, for I had to admit the validity of his reasons for delay. The caravan was long detained in dangerous, unstable ground, and the men had to carry everything. We went together to Deasy’s camp, which the caravan reached also. When the sun attained its highest altitude at mid-day, it found me still in the arms of Morpheus. I take it for granted that my two companions also requited themselves for the loss of their night’s rest.
On the morning of September 26 two horses were nearing their end; they could not get on their feet and had to be killed; one had died in the previous camp, and one fell on the march. We had lost 15 horses out of 58, and only 1 mule out of 36; these figures are distinctly in favour of the mules.
We now rode along the great longitudinal valley, where favourable ground made our progress easy, and passed a salt basin, with a pool in the middle surrounded by concentric rings of desiccation as regular as the benches of an amphitheatre. Before us in the distance was seen the caravan in two detachments, appearing like two small black spots in the boundless open landscape. I was deeply impressed by my own insignificance compared to the distances on the earth’s surface, and when I remembered that we travelled at most 13 miles a day, I was overwhelmed at the thought of the length of way we must traverse before we had crossed Tibet. Wolves were seen at the foot of a hill; perhaps they were our acquaintances of yesterday. We had to leave them, much against our will, an abundant banquet at the last camp, where six ravens had swooped down on our fallen horses.
One of the uppermost “benches,” which stood some 160 feet above the surface of the pool, afforded a capital road. Round about the soil was chalky white with salt. To the right of us was a low, brownish-purple ridge. Soon, with my usual companions, Robert and Rehim Ali, I came up with a worn-out horse. He did not look at all emaciated, but he had been relieved from duty for several days in hopes of saving his life. His guide came into camp in the evening, and reported that he had collapsed on the road and expired. The country is somewhat hilly, but solid rock seldom crops out, and then it is limestone and light-green clay-slate.
The camping-ground on this day, No. 22, had an interest of its own. Captain H. H. P. Deasy, on his remarkable expedition through West Tibet and Eastern Turkestan during the years 1896-1899, had great difficulties to contend with, and lost so many animals that, in order to save the expedition and its results, he had to leave behind a large part of his baggage and provisions, in short, everything that could be spared at all. In the year 1903 Captain Cecil Rawling made an equally meritorious journey of exploration through the same parts of Tibet, and as he found himself in a very critical situation through want of provisions, he decided to search for Deasy’s depôt, which, according to the map, must be somewhere in the neighbourhood. Two of Rawling’s men, Ram Sing and Sonam Tsering, had also accompanied Deasy, and Sonam Tsering was able to point out the place where the baggage and provisions had been buried. Thanks to the stores of rice, meal, and barley, found there in the wilderness, Rawling was able to save his horses, which would otherwise have been lost, and a small bag of horse-shoes and nails came in very usefully for their hoofs.