YARKAND TO MARALBASHI 39 



On August 1 8th, 1899, we started again, getting 

 off rather late in the morning, as is usual the first 

 day, and so having to travel through the hottest 

 part of it. The day's march was mostly through 

 cultivation, but the road was inches deep in fine 

 white dust, producing a thirst which melons only 

 partly alleviated. Close to the serai we pitched 

 camp in a field on which the lucerne had been cut, 

 and there being no wind at all, as evening came on 

 the air grew simply thick with mosquitoes ; but 

 luckily it turned chilly an hour or two after sundown, 

 and they all disappeared. Till then their numbers 

 and ferocity were most unpleasant. There had been 

 a local fair-day at the village close by, and we saw 

 lots of people on their way home a cheerful crowd, 

 so much so, indeed, that I was half inclined to think 

 that some of them had sunk their religious principle 

 of total abstinence for the occasion. 



Next morning we made an earlier start, and so 

 the caravan got to Saljilak before the worst of the 

 heat. A bit of the way was over sand dunes, where 

 the desert has got a footing. On the way I saw a 

 dead snake with a thick body and flat, venomous- 

 looking head"; but it was rather too dead for close 

 examination to be pleasant, and so I don't know 

 whether it had poison-fangs or not. 



We pitched camp under some willow-trees on a 

 backwater joining the Yarkand River, and pro- 

 ceeded to unpack and put together a portable boat 



